Patent ID: 8468117

Claim:
A method, comprising: receiving, by an on-demand database service, a definition of a component including a visual object for a user interface from a developer of a first tenant of a plurality of tenants of the on-demand database service, where the definition includes markup language for the visual object and a configurable attribute of the visual object; storing the definition of the component; defining a value for the configurable attribute of the visual object by a consumer of the first tenant of the on-demand database service, wherein the definition of the value is stored separately from the definition of the component in a portion of storage associated with the first tenant; receiving at least one instruction to a user interface controller to access the portion of storage associated with the first tenant storing the value defined for the configurable attribute; returning the accessed value to the component by passing the accessed value to the component through the configurable attribute, wherein the component uses the passed in value for displaying the visual object such that the value defined for the configurable attribute configures a manner in which the markup language of the component is displayed; wherein different values passed to the component through the configurable attribute result in the visual object having different visual characteristics when displayed.