Abstract: Various technologies and techniques are disclosed for providing direct synchronous input. An input monitor determines where an input from a sender that is directed to a target element is about to be delivered. One example for providing an input monitor includes using a system hook. If the input monitor determines that the input is about to be delivered to the target element, the input is delivered to the target element, and the sender is notified that delivery to the target element succeeded. An interface for providing a direct synchronous input is also described. The interface has a start method for monitoring inputs being sent to target elements from a sender. The interface also has a received event for notifying the sender when a particular input is received by the target element.

Abstract: A method and system are provided for efficient development of software application programs with user interfaces. Customarily, several specialists, including designers and developers, cooperate during the development stage of an application program. The invention teaches a strategy for making resource files external to the other compiled executable files in an application such that the information from the resource file may be obtained at runtime as needed without the need for compilation. Furthermore, the external resource file may be edited at runtime to allow designers to modify the look and feel for an application's interface without having to depend on developers to implement changes in the interface. Compartmentalization of the effort in developing and porting an application is facilitated for protection of source code and better management of designers and developers working on different aspects of a software application due to externalization of the resource files needed primarily by the designers.

Abstract: A computer system includes an object oriented framework that provides a set of application integration interfaces that support programmatic updating operations for maintaining locally stored copies of resources such as hypertext document pages from remote servers on a computer network. The updating operations continually check for updates to the data at the remote server and download updated versions of the resources to maintain concurrency of the locally stored copy. The updating operations are performed while a connection to the remote network is left idle, to maximize usage of on-line connection time. The updating operations also can be programmatically scheduled by a client program of the updating operations. The updating operations include updating the contents of a folder or directory in a local file system as specified in a file at a remote server on the network, and providing automatically updating and populating groups of sites or document pages organized by category.

Abstract: A method and system are provided for efficient development of software application programs with user interfaces. Customarily, several specialists, including designers and developers, cooperate during the development stage of an application program. The invention teaches a strategy for making resource files external to the other compiled executable files in an application such that the information from the resource file may be obtained at runtime as needed without the need for compilation. Furthermore, the external resource file may be edited at runtime to allow designers to modify the look and feel for an application's interface without having to depend on developers to implement changes in the interface. Compartmentalization of the effort in developing and porting an application is facilitated for protection of source code and better management of designers and developers working on different aspects of a software application due to externalization of the resource files needed primarily by the designers.

Abstract: A computer system aligns windows on a computer screen in a manner that approximates the relative position and size of the windows as they were before being aligned. A preferred method aligns "opposing sides" of all pairs of windows (the nearest parallel sides of each pair of different windows) where such alignment can take place without creating overlaps among any of the windows. The aligned windows are then expanded to fill the bounding window in which they are provided by aligning the sides of the windows with adjacent sides of the bounding window.