Patent ID: 7194743

Claim:
In a system including an application having a plurality of components, at least one component having a property, each property being identified with an identifier, a method of associating an element of a user-interface to a current state of a property, the user-interface created independently of the application with which the user interface interacts, the method comprising: (a) aassociating an element of a user-interface with a property path, the property path including a concatenation of a plurality of identifiers, the concatenation of identifiers defining a path through a plurality of application components to a property at the end of the concatenation; (b) mapping the property path to a current state of the property at the end of the path defined by the concatenation of identifiers to associate the element of the user-interface with the current state of that property; (c) detecting a change in one of a plurality of states in an application, each state in the plurality corresponding to one of the states mapped to an identifier in the concatenation of the property path; (d) examining each identifier in the concatenation of the property path in succession, starting with an identifier corresponding to the changed one of the states of the plurality of states; (e) determining for a currently examined identifier, a new next state of a property with a name identical to the currently examined identifier; (f) re-mapping the currently examined identifier to the new next state in response to a change in a currently mapped state; (g) repeating the steps of detecting a change in one of a plurality of states in an application and of examining each identifier in the concatenation of the property path in succession, for each subsequent identifier in the concatenation of identifiers; and (h) updating the element of the user-interface associated with the property path responsive to the detected change.