general grouping is performed only when a search is complete if the user selects the list view the user can select an item and add it to the collection by a selection mechanism e g dragging and dropping an item step 308 or via its affordance step 310 e g into an open collection at step 316 note that in this example if the user activates an item 39 s affordance at step 310 and no collection is currently open step 312 a collection is automatically created and opened at step 314 an on demand synthesis of a collection container before the item is added to the collection at step 316 fig6 shows an example of a canvas 600 corresponding to a u201c mix u201d window for placing and then rearranging items and groups described below during the collection authoring process step 328 represents looping back to add more items to the collection until the user is done note that a new search may be conducted or the user may continue to interact with the current search results if at step 304 the user chooses to view the results as dynamic collection queries e g groups step 320 is performed examples of grouping include grouping by item type such as differentiating documents pictures emails grouping by document author or owner grouping by date.