Patent ID: 6944830

Claim:
A method for displaying hierarchically linked information, said hierarchically linked information comprised of a plurality of nodes each having one or more links to other of said plurality of nodes, said method comprising the steps of: a) dynamically identifying a focus node for any of said plurality of nodes; b) generating a degree of interest (DOI) value for each of said plurality of nodes, said degree of interest value relative to said focus node and sibling node order and corresponding to a node size; and comprising the steps of: b1) assigning a DOI value of 0 to the focus node and any parent node up to a root of the tree structure; b2) assigning a DOI value of 0 to most interesting child node at user defined number of levels below focus node; b3) assigning a DOI value of −1 to siblings of nodes with value 0; and b4) assigning a DOI value of one less than the parent node for all the rest of the nodes; and c) laying out said plurality of nodes positioned based on associated links and sized based on associated degree of interest values in a tree structure; d) identifying and performing any node compression necessary for boundedly displaying said hierarchically linked information based on the layout of said plurality of nodes; and e) displaying said hierarchically linked information based on the layout of said plurality of nodes and node compression on a display area.