A system for providing a user interface includes a gadget definition, a style definition, and a scene file. The gadget definition includes one or more XML-based gadget definition tags defining a gadget element and the style definition includes one or more XML-based style definition tags defining one or more style attributes to be applied to the gadget element. The scene file is an XML-based document that includes a gadget element tag that specifies the gadget element. The system further includes a parser to parse the scene file, the style definition, and the gadget definition, and to generate an object that includes a gadget object corresponding to the gadget element. The system also includes a layout engine to determine, based on the object model, a layout of the user interface, and a rendering engine to render, based on the determined layout, the user interface including the gadget element.