From what I can tell, mapping all of the parent objects is only really neccessary in the Mapped Objects section and not so much in the alias section. Therefore, it would be nice if only the page obje...
So, let's say I have a button on a page. That button is what the user interacts with. When recording a test, that seems to be the only component that really needs to be mapped for that segment of the test. However, part of the test may actually be making sure that the container on the page (some DIV or other HTML component) that contains the button has a certain background color or alignment or something. So, it's not something that you "click" on as part of a test, but something that is observed. Most of the time, such container panels are things you wouldn't think of mapping in TestComplete. However, to interact with it in a test, you need to map it. It's not an easy algorithm to determine. So, to make TestComplete "smart" to exclude or include such panels is not necessarily an easy task.
So, for us, we map the WHOLE tree... and then, in the Aliases section, we highlight those things we don't need, right click, and select "Exclude" and the Alias is shortened to contain only those things we want while preserving the full mapping of the object.