Patent US 6,301,583

An authoring system is disclosed that uses an open hierarchical data structure to build and maintain menu data for an applet running on a client computer that displays a series of nested, pop-up list menus. These menus constitute a content menu that serves as an end-user access method to Web pages on a Web site. The authoring system uses the open hierarchical data structure to organize information on the Web site and generate the menu data for a content menu. The authoring system allows developers to select when menu data files are generated, at runtime or compiled, and their optimal file size. This enables the Web developer to generate menu files that can be optimized for use in a client-server network.