Abstract: A hierarchical navigation and display mechanism shows a focus node in a highlighted manner, with nodes on other levels of the hierarchy in a visually inferior manner. In many embodiments, levels that are successively removed from the focus node level may be displayed with successively visually inferior manners. Some embodiments may use color, transparency, size, or other mechanisms to illustrate visually inferior items. The navigation and display mechanism may include various controls and interactive areas for navigating through the hierarchy, expanding and collapsing groups of items within the hierarchy, and performing various operations with the items in the hierarchy. Some embodiments may include animated transitions when focus is transitioned from one node to another.