Hello all,

I am trying to toggle a panel in and out in webfocus 8 from a second panel using jquery. However, I don't seem to be able to get a handle to the panel that I want to slide in and out. I have a case opened with IBI tech support, but no one is getting back to me. I've read the documentation, and I've even read the example on creating a refresh function. Is there some documentation somewhere that I am missing? Something that talks more extensibly about the BipIframeInterface? Or, if you have another idea, please let me know. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you,

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Kris,

Hey Francis or Waz - or one of the many other guru's out there. After giving it some thought, I decided to reopen this case. I was told that because the way that the portal is designed that I could not create an html page that would live in the portal and when a button is pressed in that file it would target a different panel in the portal and "slide" that panel in and out. Ok, but what if I would "hide" that panel instead? After all, when you create a panel in the portal you can select the little down arrow in the menu bar of the panel and select hide. There has to be a way to do the same thing through an event, shouldn't there? I hope that made sense. (panel in the portal - reminds me of that line from an old Danny Kaye movie - "vessel with the pestle" - sorry showing my age here.)

Kris, do you have two panels? Each one pointing to a different HTML file? Perhaps you could set up two simple HTML files that we can pop into a BIP and then try to make them work...

Perhaps all it takes is some combination of parent. and/or window.

Sometimes it's parent.parent...

Hey, thanks for your quick reply Francis. I will try and mock something up to put into a portal. But, to answer your question, Yes, I have 2 panels. One panel has an html file that has a panel (or I could do a tall skinny button) that when clicked will hide the second panel in the portal. The second panel contains a resource tree. This is the panel that I want to capture and hide. I was originally trying to emulate the panels that you find in app studio. I will see if I can dummy something up. But it may take a bit, I've been called off of this to troubleshoot a production issue. Again thanks, for your quick response.

If I have some time tomorrow, I will try something aswell if you dont come up with solution. I have had same idea in my head for few weeks, but never have had chance to debug this. What I would like to do is to hide/slide the banner area, as I have developed portal with "Refresh all BIP pages" functionality, but as usual there are some pages where I would like to hide the general filters area.

Regards,

Thanks SSander - that's kind of what I'd like as well.

I'm still looking at this. Reading the Bindows documentation since that is the framework that was used to create the portal. No great luck yet.

quote:

I am trying to toggle a panel in and out in webfocus 8 from a second panel...

How about if in your first panel (controller) you have an HTML Composer form that asks you user what should display within the the second panel (displayer)?

The 2nd panel would then display a report, graph, or a 'no display' message accordingly.

Mechanically the 2nd panel isn't going away, but your user would be controlling its contents, the way you want them to.

The 'Filtering Reports Using an HTML Composer' form of the BIP manual, explains this concept.

Hi David,

Thanks for the suggestion. Actually, what I am trying to do is have a panel with filters (like it says in "filtering reports..." ) and a second panel with part of a resource tree so they can drag multiple graphs onto the page and have them all filtered using the filter panel. I would then like the filter panel and the resource panel to go away so they have the full real-estate of the page to display the graphs. The 3 panel - in this case a control panel will just be a very narrow panel that on mouseover will either display the other 2 panels or hide them. We could use the minimize button on top of the panels, but those still take up room and the end user would have to minimize both panels. We could use an accordion to put those 2 items in, but once again it would still take up room on the portal. Bottom line, what I am aiming for is the same kind functionality that you see in app studio with the sliding panels but with the flexibility that the portal allows the end user to be able to have their own choice of multiple graphs/reports and be able to size them however they want.

Thanks for the additional explanation of your scenario. You make a great business case for asking IB to add the ability to programmatically control a panel on a portal page.

Maybe something to look at...

The following example, shows how you can use jQuery to hide/show an object on a web page:
http://forums.informationbuild...287092626#1287092626

Is it possible to ascertain the 'id' of the panel in question? If so, could you try to use the jQuery hide/show methods?

That is where I am having difficulty. I don't seem to be able to get a handle to the panel. I was hoping I could use the filtering example to figure out how to get the id of the specific panel, but I have yet to be successful. It has to be some kind of combination of parent, document, etc., etc. In addition, if you look at the DOM with the 3D developer tool in firefox, the panel is ridiculously built up. When I step through the debugger to see what it does to minimize the panel it appears like it must goes through a loop. I think. I'm not the best at debugging this stuff.

BTW... wouldn't it be nice if we could add some of our own javascript functionality to the portal? Like, on a panel?

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Kris,

I got an e-mail saying that my case has been attached to a New Feature Request for the ability to control Portal Panel Behaviors (Delete, Move, Resize, Collapse, Hide, Refresh) via javascript from an html page. Yeah. Sorry, don't know what the NFR number is.

Thanks.

Woohoo!!! Thanks Kris!

Any word on this new feature request? I might note that we don't necessarily need the ability to control some other panel if we can at least control an html files own panel through its JavaScript. The parameters sent to all the panels could include a request code asking the html file to change itself.

But I'm a beginner struggling with the more basic question of whether there is any value in using the portal to implement programmed functionality or if I should just forget it and use the older dashboards.

If for example I want to have a menu in one panel and clicking buttons on that menu should display different data depending on what button is clicked (e.g. a client data button, an address data button, etc.). I can't find any way to implement something as basic as that in the portal. Am I missing something simple?

Things I've addressed with IBI that relate to the BIP and being able to programatically manipulate it:

- I've tried to request the ability to test for the active page within a BIP with no luck yet.

- I've tried to get collapsible filters at a page level and got the following results:
A response I gave an IBIer in a case I had opened up:
"Just got back to work today. Stayed a bit longer down near where Summit was to
spend some time with family.
During Summit, I spent some time with Barry S. in the expert room, and he tried
to show me a way to create
collapsible filters within an HTML Composer page. He told me, along with one of
the main guys behind the
development of the Portal product, that page-level collapsible filtering like
the functionality you get from the
banner within the portal is not implemented yet. There have been a good many
others already asking for it as
well. The guy over the development of the portal said they were focused on
other features and functionality at
this time leading up to 8.2, but he said they would probably be implementing it
eventually. Barry showed me, as
well as the presenters in the Jazz Up Your HTML Pages session, how to get
similar functionality within HTML
Composer. This will have to do for now until IBI finally adds the page-level
collapsible filtering in a later release.
I'm kind of bummed about it, but I guess that is that. So, I guess we can close
this case."

- I've tried to get the ability to refresh one specific panel within a page of a BIP, and did get that submitted as an NFR with David Glick's blessing.

For now, we can't programatically manipulate the panels or pages created within our BIPs sadly. But there is enough traction towards IBI making that a reality from what I've gathered at Summit 2015 when I spoke with the guys over development for the BIP product. Hopefully we will see some progress either in 8.2 or shortly after such.

Did this get answered or resolved in a later release? I'd like to add javascript to a portal (once), then have each report within the portal (another panel) reference that javascript to allow for some consolidated code...like opening a model window for a custom help page per report. Thanks.