1. In a computer system for monitoring a process, the computer system having a display device and a graphical user interface for displaying on the display device the status of components used in operation of the process, each component being represented on the graphical user interface by an associated graphical object that is generated or rendered by an application from a related vector graphic file, the improvement comprising a method of animating said graphical object to show a change in the status of the component being represented, the method comprising: inserting into said vector graphic file an animation instruction, wherein the animation instruction: is not executable code, complies with a predefined syntax, does not violate a prescribed format for the vector graphic file, is ignored by said application; and defines one or more animation effects that are dependent upon a value of at least one variable and a set of conditions applying to the at least one variable; the value of said at least one variable being dependent upon the status of said component being represented; running an interpreter engine to: (a) recognize and parse said animation instruction, (b) retrieve a current value of said at least one variable, (c) determine a required animation effect based on checking the retrieved current value of the at least one variable against said set of conditions, and (d) instruct the application to modify said graphical object to exhibit the determined animation effect; and displaying said graphical object with the determined animation effect on the display device.
3. The method of claim 1 , wherein said application is a browser having a plug-in vector graphic rendering engine that supports the format of said vector graphic file.