Patent ID: 7512899

Claim:
A computing environment comprising a processor providing a unified user interface for a modular software component-based shell application having a plurality of software components that execute within the shell application comprising: a plurality of component tables, each component table corresponding to and providing resource information about a particular software component of the application, each component table including at least one command for the corresponding component, and each component table including a description for adding each command to the user interface, each command having an associated priority; a master table merged from the plurality of component tables, said master table including available commands and available command vectors for the application, each command and command vector having a unique object identifier and a visibility flag specifying whether the command or command vector is to be displayed within the interface to a user of the interface, and said master table comprising at least one information element from among the following information elements: available commands including commands that are not menu commands; available command vectors including command vectors that do not correspond to menus commands; commands that are on toolbars; and commands that map to keystrokes; and a unified user interface automatically generated from the master table; wherein the master table is reemerged from the component tables and the user interface is automatically regenerated from the reemerged master table in response to modification of a software component of the application.