Capturing screen information

1 . A method comprising:

converting a screen layout into an Extensible Markup Language (“XML”) string; and

recreating the screen layout from the XML string at a different place or time.

2 . The method of claim 1 wherein converting comprises:

identifying an internal state of a software function associated with a portion of the screen layout; and

incorporating the internal state into the XML string.

3 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

storing the XML string in a database.

4 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

initializing an input field of the recreated screen layout with a value from the XML string.

5 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

combining the XML string with an XML fragment to produce a modified XML string; and

processing the modified XML string to produce a modified screen layout.

6 . The method of claim 1 , further comprising:

transmitting the XML string to a remote system to recreate the screen layout on a remote display screen.

7 . The method of claim 1 wherein converting comprises:

producing an XML representation describing a plurality of tiled panes.

8 . The method of claim 1 wherein converting comprises:

producing an XML representation describing a plurality of partially-overlapping panes.

9 . A computer-readable medium containing instructions to cause a programmable processor to perform operations comprising:

identifying software components associated with user interface features of a display screen;

creating a static data structure to describe states of the software components; and

processing the static data structure to recreate the user interface features of the display screen by reproducing the states of the software components.

10 . The computer-readable medium of claim 9 wherein the static data structure is an Extensible Markup Language (“XML”) object.

11 . The computer-readable medium of claim 9 wherein the states of the software components include contents of an input field of the display screen.

12 . The computer-readable medium of claim 9 wherein the states of the software components include a history of entries of an input field of the display screen.

13 . The computer-readable medium of claim 9 , containing additional instructions to cause the programmable processor to perform operations comprising:

presenting a list of available static data structures;

accepting a selection of one of the available static data structures; and

processing the selected static data structure to recreate user interface features of a display screen corresponding to the selected static data structure.

14 . A computer-readable medium containing instructions to cause a programmable processor to perform operations comprising:

collecting internal state information about a software application in response to a signal, the internal state information sufficient to reproduce a user interface display of the software application; and

converting the internal state information into a serialized data object.

15 . The computer-readable medium of claim 14 wherein the serialized data object is a first serialized data object, the medium containing additional instructions to cause the programmable processor to perform operations comprising:

receiving a second serialized data object; and

replacing the user interface display of the software application with a restored user interface display corresponding to the second serialized data object.

16 . The computer-readable medium of claim 14 wherein the serialized data object is an Extensible Markup Language (“XML”) string.

17 . The computer-readable medium of claim 14 , containing additional instructions to cause the programmable processor to perform operations comprising:

storing the serialized data object.

18 . The computer-readable medium of claim 14 wherein the serialized data object contains information to populate an input field of the user interface display.

19 . The computer-readable medium of claim 14 wherein the serialized data object contains information to cause a modal dialog to be displayed.