An untested idea for a paganated tree

The Paginated Tree (© 2009 All rights reserved) for complex messages

I was working on Sun Microsoft's Business to Business application a year ago. One of the most interesting problems that I had to be solved was to design a way to show a complex message where each section of the message could have thousands of children.

The system had to stay responsive to the user so showing all the nodes at once would not be practical.

After doing research and not finding a paginated tree I came up with the following design.

• Nodes show which repetition of the node is being shown.
• Users can expand / collapse a node and use a paginated control to see children.
• User can switch to a view where each of the repetitions are also shown.

While the icon was mostly a place holder the idea was that a user could select this icon and change to a view where the folders themselves where paginated.

Here is an example showing all repetitions of the GS segment:



Due to business needs our team never got to formally test this. So I was hoping to see what other people think of this solution.

Any comments? Problems? Ideas for a better icon?

Better yet if you have a need for a widget like this and would like to implement this idea contact me at Andrea.Kendall.job@gmail.com.