System and method for the presentation of items stored on a computer

摘要

A system and method for presenting a plurality of items of multiple types to a user. A universal data store is provided which contains a plurality of items. A portion of the items contain metadata stored in accordance with an item decoration schema. A shell presents items with corresponding metadata with an item decoration view and items without the metadata with a default display view. A shell display view is utilized to display a set of heterogeneous items and an explorer display view is provided to display items.