Method and system for visual styling of visual elements for applications

摘要

A method and system for the dynamic extension (e.g. subclassing) of objects to enable visual styling of on-screen elements is disclosed herein. The present invention allows designers and developers alike to conceive, implement, and modify native mobile interfaces effortlessly and in real time through a familiar CSS-based syntax. The technique of dynamic subclassing for the purpose of styling greatly simplifies the development process by no longer requiring the developer to directly configure visual element's properties or to subclass objects in code.

主权项

1. A method comprising:
identifying, by a styling engine of a software application being executed by one or more processors of a computing device, a plurality of visual elements defined by a declarative markup file of the software application, wherein each visual element from the plurality of visual element is associated with a base class of an application programming interface, wherein each base class of the application programming interface includes a plurality of methods, and wherein the declarative markup file specifies a respective visual styling for each of the plurality of visual elements; for each visual element of the plurality of visual elements, generating, by the styling engine and based on the at least one base class associated with the visual element, a respective dynamic subclass that includes the plurality of methods of the at least one base class associated with the visual element; assigning, by the styling engine, the respective dynamic subclass for each visual element from the plurality of visual elements as the base class of the visual element; and outputting, by the computing device, for display, a graphical user interface of the software application including at least a portion of the plurality of visual elements having the visual styling specified in the declarative markup file.