Patent ID: 7210093

Claim:
A method for displaying pages in a viewer program on a computer display monitor, wherein the viewer program displays an application window, comprising: downloading a first and second pages from one of multiple servers over a network; automatically concurrently displaying the first page in a first pane and the second page in a second pane in the application window according to predefined settings specifying how pages are to be displayed in the first and second panes; downloading a third page from one of multiple servers over the network; automatically concurrently displaying the third page in one of the first and second panes and one of the first and second pages in the other pane according to the predefined settings; downloading a fourth page from one of multiple servers over the network; automatically concurrently displaying the third and fourth pages in the first and second panes according to the predefined settings; receiving user selection of a hypertext link within one of the displayed pages; accessing the page addressed by the hypertext link; automatically concurrently displaying the page currently displayed in the second pane in the first pane and displaying the page addressed by the hypertext link in the second pane if the user selected the hypertext link from the second pane; automatically concurrently displaying the page currently displayed in the first pane and displaying the page addressed by the hypertext link in the second pane if the user selected the hypertext link from the first pane; and wherein the viewer program is capable of displaying the downloaded pages in the first and second panes according to the predefined settings when the pages downloaded from over the network do not include any page commands to cause the display of pages in separate panes within the application window.