Patent ID: 7055108

Claim:
A method for navigating a GUI web page in a browser comprising the steps of: selecting a focus element; determining a search direction; defining a search tunnel in the search direction starting at the focus element, scanning the search tunnel for a next closest GUI element to the focus element, wherein, if the step of scanning the search tunnel for the next closest element produces one element, said one element is the next closest element; wherein, if the step of scanning the search tunnel for the next closest element produces a plurality of elements, the method further comprises the steps of: determining a horizontal distance from the focus element to each of the plurality of elements; determining a vertical distance from the focus element to each of the plurality of elements; determining a distance from a center of the focus element to a center of each of the plurality of elements by calculating a square root of the sum of the vertical distance squared and the horizontal distance squared; selecting a closest element from the plurality of elements as the next closest element, the closest element having the smallest distance; transferring focus to the next closest element.