Patent ID: 7823075

Claim:
A graphical user interface (GUI) application development supporting apparatus for supporting the development of a GUI application including components, the apparatus comprising: a central processing unit; a component storage section having a logical component storage section defining the processing functions of components, and a graphics representation component storage section separately defining graphical representation of components, the graphics representation component storage section containing a first executable program for performing simple graphics representation of components, and a second executable program for performing rich graphics representation of components; an image storage section that stores a plurality of images, the plurality of images having images corresponding to a simple inactive state, images corresponding to a simple active state, images corresponding to a rich inactive state, and images corresponding to a rich active state; and an edit processing section that: associates the images corresponding to the simple inactive state and the simple active state with the first executable program; associates the images corresponding to the rich inactive state and the rich active state with the second executable program; and executes, based on a device executing the GUI application, the first executable program to generate a component based on a simple graphical representation or the second executable program to generate a component based on a rich graphical representation, the first or second executable program executing an animation index method, the animation index method extracting, from the stored plurality of images, images required by the animation index which are associated with the executed first or second program.