Abstract: A method, a system and a computer-readable storage medium having stored therein a program for interactively developing a graphical control-flow structure and associated application software for use in a machine vision system is provided. The structure is a tree view structure including a control sequence having at least one node. The method includes providing a first set of control programs representing possible machine vision tasks. The first set of control programs defines a first set of standard controls. Hardware operating parameters are provided which correspond to possible hardware. The hardware operating parameters defining a second set of standard controls. Graphical representations of possible hardware and possible machine vision tasks are displayed. Commands are received from a user to select desired hardware operating parameters corresponding to desired hardware and a machine vision graphical representation and its associated first control program corresponding to a desired machine vision task.