Abstract: A system and method are described for managing instantiation of interface elements in a rich Internet application (RIA) that includes systematically creating a tree of descriptive nodes that describe the visual interface elements of the application. Only interface elements that are not stacked under other objects or not fully hidden on the screen are instantiated using the corresponding descriptive nodes. Detail objects corresponding to the descriptive nodes are then constructed and used by a rendering engine to render the visual interface elements of the declarative application. As the user moves to locations within the application that are stacked under other objects or are hidden, the descriptive nodes and detailed objects are created representing the interface elements of those locations for rendering by the rendering engine.

Abstract: A system and method are described for managing instantiation of interface elements in a rich Internet application (RIA) that includes systematically creating a tree of descriptive nodes that describe the visual interface elements of the application. Only interface elements that are not stacked under other objects or not fully hidden on the screen are instantiated using the corresponding descriptive nodes. Detail objects corresponding to the descriptive nodes are then constructed and used by a rendering engine to render the visual interface elements of the declarative application. As the user moves to locations within the application that are stacked under other objects or are hidden, the descriptive nodes and detailed objects are created representing the interface elements of those locations for rendering by the rendering engine.

Abstract: A system and method are disclosed for history management a plurality of objects within an application, wherein each of the plurality includes at least a software method for saving the object's state and a software method for loading the object's state and a history manager function including a software method for recording an application interaction state for each user interaction with the application, wherein the application interaction state comprises the object's state for each of the plurality of objects at a time of the each user interaction with the application, wherein the user selects a desired one of the application interaction states to set the application to a desired one of the user interactions.

Abstract: A system and method are described for managing instantiation of interface elements in a rich Internet application (RIA) that includes systematically creating a tree of descriptive nodes that describe the visual interface elements of the application. Only interface elements that are not stacked under other objects or not fully hidden on the screen are instantiated using the corresponding descriptive nodes. Detail objects corresponding to the descriptive nodes are then constructed and used by a rendering engine to render the visual interface elements of the declarative application. As the user moves to locations within the application that are stacked under other objects or are hidden, the descriptive nodes and detailed objects are created representing the interface elements of those locations for rendering by the rendering engine.

Abstract: A system and method are disclosed for history management a plurality of objects within an application, wherein each of the plurality includes at least a software method for saving the object's state and a software method for loading the object's state and a history manager function including a software method for recording an application interaction state for each user interaction with the application, wherein the application interaction state comprises the object's state for each of the plurality of objects at a time of the each user interaction with the application, wherein the user selects a desired one of the application interaction states to set the application to a desired one of the user interactions.

Abstract: A system and method are disclosed for history management a plurality of objects within an application, wherein each of the plurality includes at least a software method for saving the object's state and a software method for loading the object's state and a history manager function including a software method for recording an application interaction state for each user interaction with the application, wherein the application interaction state comprises the object's state for each of the plurality of objects at a time of the each user interaction with the application, wherein the user selects a desired one of the application interaction states to set the application to a desired one of the user interactions.

Abstract: The present invention provides a method and apparatus for displaying anti-aliased text. Text on a computer display device typically contains "jaggy" edges (referred to as aliased text). The method of the present invention smoothes such "jaggy" edges by blending the edges of text into the color background the text is being rendered on. A mask or alpha channel is created through which the text is rendered. The mask is created by drawing the text at a larger size (typically 4 times the size) and shrinking the image down or by using an outline vector extraction method. The mask is used to blend a bitmap representation of the text into the background. The present invention utilizes run-length compression to encode the alpha channel data. Additionally, to avoid the need for an original bitmap, the present invention encodes the text color information into the mask data, creating a unique bitmap/mask hybrid. Due to the creation and storage of a hybrid bitmap/mask, the memory requirements are significantly decreased.