Patent ID: 7458020

Claim:
A computing device embodying a skin-rendering computer architecture comprising: a layout manager configured to process a hierarchical data structure associated with a software application user interface skin, the hierarchical data structure containing information that can be used by the layout manager to render the skin at software application runtime, wherein the information in the hierarchical data structure comprises: at least one tag pair that contains information that identifies a mapping image, the mapping image having one or more colors, each color defining a region of the mapping image; and at least one tan pair that contains information that establishes a color mapping relationship between a skin element and an associated color in the mapping image; and one or more rendering elements associated with the layout manager, each rendering element being associated with a skin element and being configured for use in rendering their associated skin element, wherein when the skin is rendered, each color region of the mapping image defines an area of the skin that is dedicated to its associated skin element.