Patent ID: 8266139

Claim:
A system allowing collaborative retrieval, search, communication, and navigation of electronic content, the system comprising: a computer implementing a content interface engine operative to process one or more inputs to retrieve, search, communicate, and/or navigate electronic content by manipulating pointers concurrently displayed and operated in a window of a browser according to the inputs, the inputs having been received from a plurality of interface devices having respective connections to the computer and concurrently controlling the browser, each pointer corresponding to a respective interface device, each interface device comprising a computing device, the browser executing on the computer; the content interface engine, executed by the computer, processing the inputs to cause the browser to retrieve, search, communicate, and/or navigate electronic content responsive to the received inputs, the window having a content display area that displays a web page of the electronic content with links therein and a browsing area displaying page indicators that respectively represent clicked search results added to a collection of loaded pages, wherein the clicked search results added to the collection of loaded pages are not displayed, and wherein the page indicators comprise tabs; only one of the interface devices being designated a controlling interface device, wherein the content interface engine processes the inputs to retrieve pages corresponding to selected links, where the content interface engine handles retrieved pages according to whether a link was selected based on an input from the controlling interface device or based on an input from at least one interface device other than the controlling interface device, the handling of the retrieved pages performed such that: pages obtained by link selection according to input received from the controlling interface device are displayed in the window and become the at displayed web page in a results pane of the window; and pages obtained by link selection according to inputs received from interface devices other than the controlling device are added to the collection of loaded pages queue become inactive web pages, are not displayed in the window, and are represented by respective tabs in the window of the browser.