Patent ID: 8201138

Claim:
A navigation-independent system for accessing the elements of a software integrated development environment (IDE) using uniform resource locators (URLs) comprising: a set of URL-accessible IDE elements stored in at least one non-transitory storage medium representing a plurality of functional objects within a software IDE, wherein each URL-accessible IDE element in the set of URL-accessible IDE elements includes a set of meta data containing key words that describe the URL-accessible IDE element; a set of URLs stored in at least one non-transitory storage medium that provide navigation-independent mechanisms to access the set of URL-accessible IDE elements within the software IDE; and a URL operation tool stored in at least one non-transitory storage medium, wherein the URL operation tool comprising program instructions that are executable by at least one processor to associate the set of URLs with the set of URL-accessible IDE elements and execute a set of user-selectable URL operations upon the set of URL-accessible IDE elements within the software IDE, and wherein the URL operation tool further comprises: a URL editor stored in at least one non-transitory storage medium, wherein the URL editor comprising program instructions that are executable by at least one processor to accept the entry of the set of URLs; an operation interface stored in at least one non-transitory storage medium that accepts a user-entered search string; and a search engine stored in at least one non-transitory storage medium, wherein the search engine comprising program instructions that are executable by at least one processor to generate a search results list of URL-accessible IDE elements by querying the meta data of the set of URL-accessible IDE elements for matches to the user-entered search string, wherein the search results list is presented within the operation interface, and wherein the search results list includes at least one of a name, a description, and the URL for each URL-accessible IDE element in the search results list.