Patent ID: 7603624

Claim:
A computer system for dynamically displaying a user interface element according to a dynamically selected style based on a user-entered property value, comprising: one or more user interface controls that are part of a software application, the user interface controls having associated data objects of one or more different content types; one or more style resources having user-entered property values associated with a computer user to be assigned to the user interface control and to the data object of the user interface control, the user interface controls being dynamically updateable and separately updateable from any style resources, such that changes to the user interface controls can be made without affecting the style resources; a styling engine for: accessing at least one of a plurality of style resources, the style resources including one or more associated property values, the style resources being dynamically updateable and separately updateable from the interface controls, such that changes to the style resources can be made without affecting the user interface controls; accessing the one or more user-entered property values included in the request; dynamically selecting, based on the user-entered property values, a style resource from among the plurality of style resources associated with the user interface control, the data objects of the user interface control and the user-entered property values, the style resource corresponding to at least one of the user-entered property values associated with the computer user; and determining that the dynamically selected style resource corresponding to at least one of the user-entered property values is appropriate based on the content type of the data objects to which the dynamically selected style resource is to be applied, such that the dynamically selected style resource is only applied to those data objects of the user interface controls for which the dynamically selected style is determined to be appropriate; and a rendering engine operably coupled to the styling engine for rendering a display representation, in accordance with the dynamically selected style determined to be appropriate for the user interface control's data object's content type, of the user interface control with the data object for presentation on a user interface display, the user interface control and the data object each including the dynamically selected style resource corresponding to the user-entered property value, the rendering engine being configured to perform the following: receiving a second request to apply one or more changes to the user interface controls of the software application; and while the software application is running, dynamically re-rendering the display representation to include the indicated changes to the user interface controls without affecting the changes made by the dynamically selected style resources, wherein the user interface controls and the style resources are each separately updatable without affecting each other.