Many electronic devices provide display areas, e.g., computer monitor screens, in which to display data. Often, because of the data's display properties, e.g., its font size, the data is too large to display all at once within the display area. For example, when the data represents a figure, the figure's vertical height or the figure's horizontal width may be, respectively, higher or wider than the vertical height or horizontal width of the display area; or when the data represents text, the number of lines of text may exceed a number of lines that fits within the vertical height of the display area, or the length of each text line may exceed a text length that fits within the horizontal width of the display area.
In these instances, to navigate throughout displayable data, an interface, e.g., a graphical user interface (GUI), often provides scroll-bars or toggle-buttons. Scroll-bars are each displayed as a single bar with a predefined length that can be shifted within a predefined space. Often, the predefined space spans across the area in which the data is to be displayed. They may be vertically displayed when the data's vertical height exceeds that of the display area's vertical height, and horizontally displayed when the data's horizontal width exceeds that of the display area's horizontal width. Toggle-buttons are each displayed as a set of two buttons, one placed at a first extremity and another placed at second extremity opposite the first extremity. A user may shift a scroll-bar or depress a toggle-button and thereby indicate a direction in which the data should scroll.
Data applications, especially business data applications, often arrange interrelated data in tables. A table is arranged according to, and illustrates, the structural interrelationship of its data. For example, a table may have columns and rows. Each column may, for example, represent a major category of data. Each row may, for example, represent a sub-category of the major categories. The rows and columns may intersect to form multiple cells. Display of data in a particular cell of the table may indicate that the data relates to the major category of the data's cell's column, and to the sub-category of the of the data's cell's row.
When the sum of all columns' widths exceeds the display area's width or when the sum of all the rows' heights exceeds the display area's height, the data applications provide, respectively, a horizontal scroll-bar or toggle-button to horizontally scroll and/or toggle between the first and last columns, and a vertical scroll-bar or toggle button to vertically scroll and/or toggle between the first and the last rows. For example, a scroll-bar 1 is provided in FIG. 1a. In response to a shift of scroll-bar 1, the entire table, i.e. all columns of the table collectively, may shift. For example, when scroll-bar 1 is shifted to the right, a previously non-displayed column to the right of the column labeled “Document Size” may be displayed; and the previously displayed column labeled “Document ID” may be removed from the display area.
Data, e.g., text, within a row of a particular column may be wider than the particular column, although not necessarily wider than the entire display area. In this instance, not all of the row's text can be viewed at once. For example, in FIG. 1a, the text within each of the cells of the column labeled “Time Stamp” is wider than the column, so that the year is only partially displayed. However, current data applications do not provide for scrolling and/or toggling data within a particular column and/or row, via control of a scroll-bar and/or toggle-buttons. For example, even when scroll-bar 1 is shifted to the right, the text within the “Time Stamp” column will not scroll in relation to the column to reveal the entire year of the cell. Currently, to view all of a cell's text, a user can widen the cell's column; select the text and have a portion of the text superimposed over adjacent columns; or select the text and use an arrow key on a keyboard to move a cursor through and thereby scroll through the data. The first alternative wastes much of the display area. When a column is widened, the column occupies more of the display area, thereby allowing a fewer number of columns to be concurrently displayed. Furthermore, a column may contain numerous rows with data that is not wider than the column's width. For these rows, widening the column width, and thereby using more of the display area is wasteful. The second alternative causes rows of adjacent column to overlap. Furthermore, the second and third alternatives are not as convenient and as easy as scrolling with a scroll-bar or toggle-button. These same alternatives apply when the height of data within the columns of a particular row exceeds the height of the data's particular row.