The present invention is a Web based operating system that provides general access to resources distributed throughout the Internet. It provides a graphical user interface through which users may perform common "desktop" operations, such as invoking applications, copying files, and setting sharing attributes of files, and translate them to the operations that are appropriate for the resources that are the target of the request. Additionally, the invention provides a general-purpose attribute store or registry to keep the persistent state needed by the WebTop and other applications, including users preferences, application-invocation information, and application settings and any other attribute-type information.