Patent ID: 7743343

Claim:
A method for displaying a data collection organized in a hierarchy containing a plurality of levels, said data collection comprising at least one individual item at a level of the hierarchy and at least one sub-collection at the same level of the hierarchy as the at least one individual item, each sub-collection comprising one or more sub-collection items, said method comprising: displaying each individual item by displaying a thumbnail representation of said individual item in a thumbnail representation area of a display; displaying each sub-collection at the same level of the hierarchy as the displayed individual items in a respective sub-collection representation area, each sub-collection representation area displaying data representing a corresponding sub-collection; in response to a request to display additional thumbnail representations, resizing at least one of the thumbnail representation area of the display and the sub-collection representation area; in response to a grouping command specifying a group comprising a plurality of images, modifying the display of the at least one individual item to display the at least one individual item as at least one group thumbnail image comprising a composite of a plurality of images in the group specified by the grouping command; and in response to a unified sorting command, modifying the display of the at least one individual item to display the at least one individual item in sorted order and modifying the display of the sub-collection representation area to display the at least one sub-collection in sorted order.