US Patent 7689933 Methods and apparatus to preview content

A display application herein allocates a first region of a display screen for displaying a list of content items such as documents or files. A respective viewer of the display screen can select multiple content items from the list. The display application highlights selected content items. For each of multiple selected content items, the display application displays a preview of corresponding sub-content such as a respective set of thumbnail images associated with a respective content item in an allocated second region of the display screen. The second region of the display screen includes one or more visual boundaries so that a user can identify groupings of related thumbnails associated with selected content items.