Patent ID: 8082518

Claim:
A method for multi-scale viewing of a scrollable area in a display utilizing a scrollbar for zooming and panning the scrollable area, comprising: using input device events monitoring to monitor interaction with a scroll handle in the scrollable area of the display; upon detecting a scroll handle drag at least orthogonal to an orientation of the scroll handle in the scrollbar, activating a display area zooming function comprising: adjusting a scale of a viewbox of the display comprising: determining an orthogonal distance travelled in dragging the scroll handle; and rescaling the viewbox as a function of the orthogonal distance travelled comprising: if the scroll handle is dragged toward a center of the display, rescaling the viewbox by zooming out to display more content in the viewbox; and if the scroll handle is dragged away from the center of the display, rescaling the viewbox by zooming in to display more detail of content in the viewbox; upon detecting the scroll handle drag at least orthogonal to the orientation of the scroll handle in the scrollbar, activating a new displaybox function comprising: distinguishing an area of the display from a remainder of the display, the distinguished area corresponding to an area of the resealed viewbox that would be displayed upon detecting a release of the dragged scroll handle at a particular location within the display; scaling the distinguished area as a function of a zoom level of the resealed viewbox; and displaying a view of content of the distinguished area in the display behind a view of the viewbox; and upon detecting a release of the dragged scroll handle at the particular location within the display, changing the display to correspond to the content of the distinguished area.