Patent ID: 8326933

Claim:
An appearance package management method, comprising: receiving an appearance package by a terminal from a server, and obtaining a unique appearance package identifier (ID) of the appearance package, wherein the appearance package comprises a plurality of appearance elements that are provided to the terminal or operated through the terminal, and the appearance elements comprise contents presented by the terminal to the users; storing a corresponding relation between the appearance package and the unique appearance package ID; receiving an operation message of some appearance package, and operating the appearance package corresponding to an appearance package ID obtained from the operation message according to the appearance package ID obtained from the operation message and the stored corresponding relation between the appearance package and the unique appearance package ID, wherein the unique appearance package ID comprises an ID of a service provider (SP) and an appearance package serial number; wherein the operating the corresponding appearance package further comprises installing or updating the appearance package; and the installing or updating the appearance package further comprises: determining whether the appearance package corresponding to the unique appearance package ID obtained from the operation message exists locally; and determining to perform an update operation on the appearance package, and updating the corresponding appearance package, if the appearance package corresponding to the unique appearance package ID obtained from the operation message exists locally; or determining to perform an installation operation on the appearance package, and installing the corresponding appearance package, if the appearance package corresponding to the appearance package ID obtained from the operation message does not exist locally.