Miller columns

The columns allow multiple levels of the hierarchy to be open at once, and provide a visual representation of the current location.

It is closely related to techniques used earlier in the Smalltalk browser, but was independently invented by Mark S. Miller in 1980 at Yale University.

While at Datapoint, Miller generalized the technique to browse directed graphs with labeled nodes and arcs.

[citation needed] In all cases, the technique is appropriate for structures with high degree (large fanout).

The GNUstep project continues to offer a Miller column browser that closely follows the NeXT approach, bringing the advantages of a column browser to Linux, BSD, and other operating systems with large tree structures.