Wednesday, August 24, 2011

Upcoming Webinar – Introducing SkillBuilders Modal Plug-in

Our next Application Express plug-in is ready to be introduced to the community. Although our plug-ins are generally well documented, sometimes it’s easier to learn how to use something by seeing it in action – this is your chance!

Abstract

Modal windows are very popular these days – and for good reason. They can help focus users’ attention on new content without disturbing their overall context within an application – and they’re cool too! Our latest plug-in, SkillBuilders Modal Page, was designed to display entire APEX pages as modal dialogs. Rather than just release the plug-in into the wild, we thought we’d take the opportunity to provide some hands on training with it. If you’re in need of a modal page solution, or you’d simply like to learn more about installing and leveraging plug-ins in APEX, do not miss this session.

Click here to register.

As usual, it’s free to attend – but it’s real training. I’ll show you several scenarios where use of the plug-in could be beneficial. Then you’ll learn how to perform the same customizations on your own once you’ve downloaded the plug-in. Everything from installation of the plug-in to event bindings with jQuery will be covered.

The webinar will run on Wednesday, August 31 at 12pm EDT. To see other time zones, click the registration link and then on the “Show in my Time Zone” link at the top of the page.

21 comments:

  1. Hi Dan,
    I just saw your webinar and it was fantastic !

    As is said I'm new to apex (even I followed its evolution since htmldb), but not to oracle as I'm a forms developer since 1998.
    Apex really rocks! with the version 4 and above.
    I'm also a big fan of web 2.0 and, Jquery and its possibilities.

    THANKS A LOT AGAIN !

    JeanYves

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  2. JeanYves,

    Thanks - I'm glad you found it useful!

    Dan

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  3. Great. I missed the webinar :-(

    Is it possible to (re)post it?

    I'll love to see it. It's one of the most wanted features as it raises the user experience so much.

    Kind regards,
    Bart Verstegen

    bartwww@gmail.com

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  4. Hi Bart,

    Not to worry, we will make the webinar available on line within a week. Keep an eye on the skillbuilders.com/plugins page as we'll be adding a new column called Related Links which will include the link to the webinar.

    Regards,
    Dan

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  5. Hi Dan,

    I've watched your webinar about the modal page plugin and i am trying to implement this in an application I’ve created.

    The modal popup seems to work, but i don’t get the auto close working when the save buttons is clicked. I think i am overseeing something. Can you please help me?

    What have i done:
    1. Installed the plugin (of course…)
    2. Created a dynamic action to call the page in modal popup (this works)
    3. Created a dummy auto_close page
    4. Created a branche in the page which acts as the popup to the dummy “auto close page”
    5. Created a dynamic action with event “auto close”
    6. Altered the template of the modal-popup template and added id="success-message" in the subtemplate.

    Thanks in advance,

    Sergei Martens

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  6. Sergei,

    You said you made a change to the popup template, but what page level template is your "auto-close" page using?

    Also, are you sure that the branch is displaying process success messages (there's a checkbox)?

    Regards,
    Dan

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  7. Hi Dan,

    It is working now.

    Problem was i had no value in the item "Process Success Message" of the pageproces of the popup.

    Stupid me....

    Thanks for the quick reaction!

    ReplyDelete
  8. Great Plugin!
    But...
    In your "Modal Page demo" application, the following scenario doesn't seem to work:
    1) click "Edit Employee"
    2) make a change (eg. add value for COMM)
    3) Click "Apply Changes"
    4) Click "Edit Employee" again --> nothing happens

    The same happens when you sort the columns and then try to edit an employee.

    On your demo-page (via apex.oracle.com) this doesn't happen. There it works as advertised.

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  9. Anonymous,

    You are correct. I forgot to change the Event Scope from "bind" to "live". If you make this change in the "Edit clicked" Dynamic Action it should work for you.

    Regards,
    Dan

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  10. Hi Dan,

    I have created one Apex 4.02 application that uses your Modal Page plugin.

    I have a suggestion: in Create Cliked and Edit Cliked(with Event Scope: live) dynamic action add one action (before SkillBuilder Modal Page action): javascript:$x_Remove('success-message');
    Reason: if you don't remove succes message and call again edit (or create), after succesfull action, you will see two succesfull messages.

    I also have one problem:
    1. call Edit (click on Edit link button)
    2. I don't change anything and clik on Apply Changes button
    3. call back to the caller page is wrong (stay on called page with strange layout)

    Can you have some suggestions?

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  11. Anonymous,

    You are correct, I'll update the application to remove the success message before adding another.

    The issue with the modal not closing when there is no "net" change is caused by the DML process not displaying a success message if no real change is made.

    An easy workaround is to remove the success message from that process and create a new process (null;) that always adds a success message.

    Regards,
    Dan

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  12. Dan,
    I'm have a problem with the plug-in. I believe I have it set up properly, I went over your video several times. My format is a little different. I have a page with a form, and a tabular report that is a child table, think, order header and order detail relationship. I want a modal on the child table. If I edit the order detail and save, it doesn't refresh, but if I change the mode to bind, it refreshes but the edit buttons are inactive until a refresh the whole page. I changed the report to an ireport but it doesn't work at all. Any ideas?

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  13. Hi Drew,

    Sorry, but I do not follow. Please set up an example I can get to on apex.oracle.com. Provide me with developer credentials and I will take a look. You can email the details to me directly.

    Regards,
    Dan

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  14. Hi Dan
    Many thanks for your many contributions to the Apex world.

    I'd like to suggest that you allow the addition of a "create" option within your super-LOV, which would of course invoke the modal page plugin. This would make it a super-duper-LOV!
    I find that offering a create option for users from within a standard select list creates some issues due to the need to reload the LOV to include the newly created record.
    So it'd be great if I could upgrade all of these areas of my app to use your super-super-lov and resolve the create issues at the same time.

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  15. Rumpelstiltskin,

    2.0 will allow the user to type in the text box - a feature called "enterable". If enterable, the developer can set up the item to allow for entries outside the LOV. This could allow you to do the create.

    We may consider other options after 2.0 is released.

    Regards,
    Dan

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  16. Hi,

    I can't make this plugin to work im my app in APEX 4.1. :(

    I believe I have it set up properly, but all i have got is: screen is fade out, the window with Dialog Title show up with progress bar in it. That's all.

    I try to install your "Modal Page demo" application in my workspace and it works like it should. Than I have make my own pages with modal window repeating steps from my application and... it works.

    What may be the problem?

    Best regards,

    Ps. Sorry for my bad english.

    ReplyDelete
  17. Hi Peter,

    Please see:
    http://www.danielmcghan.us/2011/08/new-browser-security-attributes-in-apex.html

    Regards,
    Dan

    ReplyDelete
  18. Hi Dan,

    Thank you for a great plugin!
    I have everything working perfectly except the refresh of the region on the page that opens the modal page (I want to refresh on auto-close of the modal page).

    Is there something I should look for?
    I have created a Dynamic Action on the triggering page with the following settings:
    Event : Auto Close [Skill Builders Modal Page]
    Selection Type : DOM Object
    DOM Object: document
    No condition
    I set it to refresh a region on the form.

    I am on Apex 4.1.

    Thank you for any help you can provide!
    Michelle

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  19. Hi Michelle,

    Did you see this?
    http://skillbuilders.com/webinars/webinar.cfm/53?title=Introducing%20SkillBuilders%20Modal%20Page%20Plug-in

    If so and you're still having difficulties, please email me directly.

    Regards,
    Dan

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  20. Dan,
    I've watched the demo about 6 times now and found that different themes are indeed an issue. I'm trying to use #13 Classic Blue and I can get everything to work except the auto-close/refresh. I tried looking at the tag in Firebug and it lists the success message as <div id="t13MessageHolder">
    <div class="t13SuccessMessage"> Action Processed.</div>
    <div>

    As such, I tried using div#t13SuccessMessage as the auto-close on element selector and it doesn't seem to do the trick. Any ideas of things to check here?

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  21. Hi Blair,

    Please put an example on apex.oracle.com and provide me with developer credentials so that I can take a look. You can send the credentials to my email address.

    Regards,
    Dan

    ReplyDelete