Patent ID: 6964051

Claim:
A computer program product, tangibly stored on a computer readable medium, comprising: instructions operable to execute on a client computer to interact with one or more functionality servers remote from the client computer to obtain, and to maintain locally on the client computer, control information specifying the availability of each of a set of one or more remote features, each remote feature being a feature that requires, for proper operation in an application that invokes the remote feature, a resource external to the application; and instructions operable to execute as a shared component on a client computer for multiple distinct applications, the instructions of the shared component being operable to cause the shared component (i) to receive requests for one or more particular remote features from two or more applications, and (ii) to use the obtained control information to respond to each request with either (a) information indicating that the requested remote feature should be treated as unavailable, or (b) information indicating that the requested remote feature should be treated as available; whereby each distinct application operating with the shared component can determine whether or not remote features should be enabled in a user interface provided by the application without the application having to access a remote server.