The present invention provides a unique method and user interface that
facilitates accessing and browsing objects in which a user begins with a
center object (e.g., one or a few focal objects) displayed on a screen
and related objects are populated on the screen as well. The related
objects can be further organized into clusters whereby each cluster or
grouping of objects expands on a particular attribute of the center
object. The attributes correspond to metadata. Thus, the objects are
populated based upon the metadata of the center object. According to one
aspect, the user can access one or more specific objects having a
plurality of attributes and then relax at least one of the attributes to
see what other objects share at least one attribute with the center
object. According to another aspect, the object having the closest match
to a search request can be centrally displayed with other close matches
arranged by their respective metadata.