Patent ID: 6948120

Claim:
A computer-implemented method that authors information stored in a document, wherein a client computer processes the information at run-time, comprising the steps of: receiving information about a first control that has both property types and property values that define how the first control appears in the document; wherein a software application contains the first control and whose application's extensibility interfaces do not natively support a design-time control; creating a second control as a design-time control whose property types substantially match the property types of the first control; wherein the second control is created by: (i) receiving at least a portion of the run-time information of the first control; (ii) parsing the run-time information in order to determine the property values of the first control; (iii) determining type of design-time control to create as the second control based upon the determined property values; generating an interface for modifying by the user of the property values of the second control; and using the second control's modified property values to update the property values of the first control in the document by converting the second control's modified property values into run-time information to be used within the document.