Patent US 5,872,974

A GUI software development system that executes in a multitasking environment is enhanced with the addition of a property setting manager program that provides a means whereby a programmer may readily store and retrieve one of a plurality of program object property sets for a particular program object, be the object a visual control or a non-visual object that provides a distinct added functionality to the program. The property setting manager program provides functionality to extract current property settings of a control or object and save those settings as a predefined property set for future use. Predefined property sets are automatically made available to the programmer upon detection of an event indicating a corresponding control or object is being added to a computer program under development. Multiple unique predefined property settings for a particular programming object or control are stored for later recall so that the programming effort required to establish initial property settings is minimized. Further, an edit feature enables property settings of a program object or control to be easily modified to a new or different set of property settings at a later time. Predefined naming prefixes are automatically presented to the user upon detection of the addition of a new program object or control to aid in establishing standardized or preferred personalized reference names for each new program object.