1. A method for managing display of electronic documents in a client-server architecture, comprising: on the client: receiving, from the server, data that comprises i) document content for an electronic document, and ii) a visual style set of visual styles that affects display of the document content, wherein a visual style of the visual style set comprises a style element set of style elements, and a lock status that corresponds individually to a style element of the style element set indicates whether the corresponding style element is editable or non-editable by a user of the electronic document; and displaying a document user interface having i) a document display portion that displays the document content based on a selected visual style of the visual style set, and ii) a style editing portion for editing the visual characteristics of the document content based on the selected visual style and the lock status; wherein displaying the document user interface comprises generating the style editing portion to allow the user to view and modify an editable style element of the style element set and to view but not modify a non-editable style element of the style element set.
8. The method of claim 1 , further comprising: receiving, via the style editing portion, an edit request for the editable style element; and sending, to the server, the edit request for the editable style element.