An apparatus and a method are disclosed for handling multiple display modes, such as column-first and row-first display modes. In particular, a telecommunications terminal receives a computer file (e.g., an HTML-encoded file, etc.) from a content server. The computer file comprises a data-ordering tag, in accordance with the illustrative embodiment of the present invention, along with one or more displayable data items. Based on the data-ordering tag, the terminal with its browser first maps the data items into an N-row by M-column array of display cells in accordance with the illustrative embodiment, wherein N and M are positive integers. The terminal then displays the mapped data items in the array of display cells. The telecommunications terminal further comprises a two-dimensional array of buttons. Each cell in the array of display cells is associated with one or more buttons in the array of buttons.