Patent ID: 7137066

Claim:
A method executed on a computer system for providing themes for controls of a first application and a second application in a graphical operating system environment, method comprising: receiving a first render request for a first control of the first application, the first control capable of being rendered according to properties in a non-binary theme file; receiving a second render request for a second control of the second application, the second control incapable of being rendered according to properties in a non-binary theme file; converting the non-binary theme file to a shared binary theme file; in response to the first render request, accessing the shared binary theme file to retrieve theme property data for the first control, wherein the act of accessing the shared binary theme file comprises: retrieving an offset into a class data section of the shared binary theme file, the class data section having theme property data for a class in binary format; performing a binary search for class property data at the offset; determining if class property data exists at the offset; jumping to a global data section of the shared binary theme file having global theme property data, if no class property data is found; and retrieving global theme property data from the global data section; in response to the second render request, accessing the shared binary theme file to retrieve theme property data for the second control; and rendering the first and second control according to the retrieved theme property data.