Importance

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Abstract

A standard user interface enables a user to filter an arbitrary unfamiliar data set intuitively and effectively. The illustrated interface includes a header control presenting labels, filters, and pulldown menus for each attribute of a data set, presented by an associated display control. The control communicates with a data provider through a set of APIs included in the computer's operating system. Through these APIs the data provider indicates the labels and menus to be displayed, while the header control passes new filter criteria to the data provider as it is specified by the user. The data provider filters the data set according to the user-specified filter criteria, and returns the filtered data set for display by the display control. Desirably, new filter criteria are passed to the data provider as they are being typed by the user, allowing the data provider to return successively smaller sets of result data, thus giving the visual impression of a shrinking data set. Non-textual filtering criteria can be input using non-textual interfaces, specified by the data providers. The illustrated control is data-agnostic, allowing its standardized use across a wide variety of data types and data providers.

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First Claim