Patent ID: 7155676

Claim:
An authoring system comprising: presentation data including at least one container object containing at least two media objects containing media data, the media data including at least one of text data or picture data; hierarchical structuring of the presentation data by nesting container objects within container objects to form a hierarchical object space; a playback display for playing back the presentation data by presenting the media data in the playback display, the playback display being associated with a master container object that contains the set of playing objects whose media data is displayed in the playback display; a destination container object which is directly contained within the master container object, and which is associated with a nested sub-display shown within the playback display, and which contains at least two media objects which are playing and whose media data is displayed within the sub-display; and user-initiated navigation through the hierarchical object space comprising a preemption of playback for die playing objects contained in the master container object which are not contained within the destination container object, and further comprising a transition whereby the nested sub-display is no longer displayed in the playback display and the media data previously displayed in the nested sub-display becomes displayed in the playback display overall.