Patent ID: 7907966

Claim:
A method of providing for operation of cross-platform applications in a wireless phone, the method comprising: providing, at the wireless phone, a cross-platform application shell configured to determine properties of hardware components of the wireless phone; receiving, at the wireless phone, a cross-platform application comprising markup language data defining a display page of the cross-platform application, the markup language data including: a virtual position tag associated with a first display element on the page, the virtual position tag identifying a second display element on the page and specifying a display position of the first display element relative to the second display element on the page; and a virtual icon tag associated with an icon display element on the page, the virtual icon tag specifying a position of the icon display element on the page relative to another display element on the page; automatically determining, by executing the cross-platform application shell on the wireless phone, one or more properties of the hardware components of the wireless phone; and executing the cross-platform application on the wireless phone, the executing comprising: generating a display layout for the page of the cross-platform application for display on a display device associated with the wireless phone, wherein generating the display layout comprises using one or more of the determined properties of the hardware components of the wireless phone, in combination with the virtual position tag specifying the display position of the first display element on the page relative to the second display element on the page, to determine an actual display location on the display device of the first display element; identifying a state value for the virtual icon tag; and using the identified state value when the virtual icon tag is identified to determine a display image for the icon display element.