Patent ID: 7627599

Claim:
A computer controlled method executed on a suitably programmed computer comprising: configuring a constrained display area comprising a constrained depth extent and a constrained breadth extent; receiving a hierarchical data structure comprising a plurality of nodes containing information comprising text and a respective node interest characteristic; distributing the nodes over depth levels; segmenting the hierarchical data structure into a plurality of blocks, each block comprising sibling nodes selected from the nodes and associated with a breadth and one or more of the depth levels; determining an extent for each depth level comprising a total of the breadth for each block associated with that depth level; determining that the extent for at least one of the depth levels exceeds the constrained breadth extent; decreasing the extent by ordering the sibiling nodes for each block in the at least one depth level by their respective node interest characteristic and by aggregating at least a part of the sibling nodes as aggregates for one or more of the blocks into an elided subset based on the respective node interest characteristic such that the extent does not exceed said constrained breadth extent; assigning the unaggregated sibling nodes in each block into a visualized subset; placing the blocks into the constrained display area for each depth level and positioning the unaggregated sibling nodes of the visualized subset and the aggregates within the blocks; and presenting the information associated with the unaggregated sibling nodes of the visualized subset within the constrained display area.