Patent ID: 7814428

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for visualizing a navigable object hierarchy, the method comprising: receiving, at a computing device, an indication that a particular object is to be displayed in a graphical user interface (GUI), the particular object being part of a hierarchy of objects that each include multiple attributes; displaying, in response to receiving the indication, an object presentation GUI that includes: (i) a details GUI component that presents the multiple attributes for the particular object, and (ii) a hierarchy GUI component that visually depicts at least a portion of the hierarchy of objects that includes the particular object, and relationships between depicted objects in the depicted portion of the hierarchy, wherein the hierarchy GUI component presents, for each of the depicted objects, at least two attributes of the multiple attributes that are stored for the depicted object, the at least two attributes being a subset of the multiple attributes, wherein the hierarchy GUI component is configured so that: (a) a first-type user-selection, in the hierarchy GUI component, of any of the depicted objects having a different type than the particular object causes replacement, in the details GUI component, of the presentation of the multiple attributes for the particular object with a presentation of multiple attributes for the user-selected depicted object, and (b) a second-type of user-selection, in the hierarchy GUI component, of the particular object enables the user to edit a value for each of the at least two attributes of the particular object that are presented in the hierarchy GUI component, wherein user-editing of any of the at least two attributes causes an update, in the details GUI component, of the presentation of the edited attribute with an edited value; receiving user input to display a configuration GUI that is for configuring the object presentation GUI; and displaying the configuration GUI in response to receiving the user input, the configuration GUI enabling the user to define, for each depicted object, the subset of attributes from the multiple attributes for the depicted object as the attributes that are to be displayed in the hierarchy GUI component for the depicted object.