Patent ID: 8280947

Claim:
A method for use in running a display-based computer application, the display-based computer application comprising a plurality of application segments, involving distributing computing between a server on a server computer and a client on a client computer, the server computer and the client computer operatively interconnected by way of a computer network, the method comprising the steps of: (a) providing, by the server computer, a generic client engine to the client computer, the generic client engine comprising: (i) an application manager defining an application instance of the display-based computer application on the client computer, (ii) a display manager for each application segment of the plurality of application segments, the display manager serving to manage displays on the client computer generated by the display-based computer application, wherein the display manager is an instance of a generic display manager class configured to model all of a plurality of display elements of the display-based computer application; and (iii) one or more load managers for loading and parsing individual application subset definition files, (b) providing, by the server computer, a collection of the individual application subset definition files to the client computer, wherein each of the individual application subset definition files relates to one of the plurality of application segments, wherein the server delivers an application subset definition file responsive to a request from an application segment of the plurality of application segments, wherein the application subset definition file comprises parsable instructions for the application segment, using a load manager of the one or more load managers, to perform at least one selected from a group consisting of: modify a respective display manager, corresponding to the application subset definition file, by way of a recursive transformation within the application instance, and remove the respective display manager and create a new display manager, and wherein the load manager is instantiated on the client computer in response to the request.