Migrating from the Modal Page Plug-in to APEX 5 Modal Pages

While chatting with Roel Hartman many moons ago, he asked if I could build a plug-in that would help open APEX pages in modal dialogs. At the time I was working on another plug-in with Jason Lyle that we were calling Super LOV, so I told him it would have to wait a bit. Despite Roel's worry that his request would go to the end of an endless line of other priorities, two months later he was playing with the prototype. He told me, "This will be the 'killer-plug-in.'"

Turned out he was right. Modal Page turned out to be one of the most downloaded and heavily used plug-ins in the APEX community. But the plug-in wasn't without its share of issues. Users had to find, download, and install the plug-in. Additionally, there security settings that needed to be relaxed and small tweaks that needed to be done with various themes to get everything working correctly. These were issues that could only be solved if modal pages became a feature of APEX, which is exactly what happened with APEX 5.0!

As would be expected, the APEX team (notably Hilary Farrell) did an excellent job integrating modal pages into APEX. Unfortunately, converting existing modal pages built with the plug-in to the new built-in modal functionality is a manual process. Luckily, Christoph Ruepprich has taken the time to write a blog post that will help folks through the transition: https://ruepprich.wordpress.com/2015/06/01/apex-5-convert-skillbuilders-modal-to-universal-theme

Give that post a read if you need to do the conversion and enjoy the new modal page features of APEX 5.0!