A system and process for providing adaptable controls to computing applications to facilitate interaction by an operator with computing application content is provided. The present invention provides a system to update the control parameters remote to the computing application to reflect changes in operator's preferences. In an illustrative implementation, these dynamic controls may take the form of an add-on toolbar having drop down menus that have the form of panes. In operation, the computing application launches and retrieves the parameters of these controls through messaging from a remote server computer. When launched, the computing application will display the add-on toolbar, maintaining Web-in-Web panes, having the latest updated parameters (i.e. content, look, and feel of the toolbar and panes) as found on the remote server computer. These parameters may be changed by the operator to reflect changes in their content or feature preference.