In one embodiment, a method for using a key to recreate a state of a visual control element includes retrieving a key from memory. The key represents a state of a visual control element to be output to a dynamically-generated web page. The method also includes parsing the key to obtain a plurality of key-value pairs representing parameters of a uniform resource locator (URL) which is used to recreate the visual control element. Also, the method includes outputting the visual control element to the dynamically-generated web page using the URL according to the state obtained from the key.