Patent ID: 8316323

Claim:
A computer program product comprising one or more physical computer-readable media having thereon computer-executable instructions that, when executed by one or more processors of a computing system, cause a computing system to perform a computer-implemented method for diagrammatically navigating and viewing the nodes of a hierarchically structured document, the method comprising the following acts: displaying at a graphical user interface of a computing system a hierarchical visualization of multiple nodes in a hierarchically structured document, the hierarchical visualization comprising in a first view a plurality of windows with each window representing a node in the hierarchy of the hierarchically structured document, with some windows representing parent nodes in the hierarchy in relation to one or more child nodes in the hierarchy, and the child nodes being displayed within the window of their corresponding parent node; providing at one or more of the child windows a detail control that may be used to expand or collapse the visualization of a selected child node so that (i) when the detail control is used to expand the selected child node, the one or more child windows are fully opened within the window of the selected child node so as to display within each fully opened window all fields showing parameters of the node for that fully opened window and fields showing relationships with any child nodes of the node for that fully opened window, and (ii) so that when the detail control is used to collapse the selected child node, the one or more child windows are closed within the window of the selected child node; and providing at one or more of the parent windows a detail control that may be used to expand or collapse the visualization of a selected parent node so that (i) when the detail control is used to expand the selected parent node, one or more parent windows are opened outside of the window of the selected parent node so as to display the selected parent node within the one or more parent windows that are opened, and (ii) so that when the detail control is used to collapse the selected parent node, the one or more parent windows of the selected parent node are closed.