1. A non-transitory computer-readable medium storing code that when executed by one or more processors associated with one or more computer systems configures the one or more processors for creating documents of desktop applications that act as user interfaces for web-based applications, the non-transitory computer-readable medium comprising: code for creating contents of a document in a native application format associated with an application that includes or is in communication with a view layer and a controller layer developed via an application development framework; code for associating a user interface element with a portion of the contents of the document using the view layer and the controller layer, wherein the user interface element and the portion of the contents are components of the application development framework and the portion of the contents of the document is linked with data associated with data models of a web-based application in communication with a model layer developed via the application development framework; code for mapping the user interface element to one or more of the data models of the web-based application using the view layer and the controller layer, wherein the model layer exposes the data models to the view layer and controller layer such that the user interface element contributes a list picker comprising at least a portion of the data associated with the one or more data models of the web-based application to a user interface within the application; code for generating metadata associated with the document based on the associating of the user interface element with the portion of the contents of the document and the mapping of the user interface element to the one or more data models of the web-based application; code for retrieving the document from the web-based application, the document comprising metadata that allows the view layer and the controller layer to initialize the document in the application and request the portion of data associated with the one or more data models from the model layer; and code for rendering the list picker in the user interface within the document at runtime based on the document, the metadata associated with the document, and the portion of data associated with the one or more data models.