CoolGuy,

Please open your IE browser and go to Tools -> Internet Options. On the General tab, click the Delete button and make sure "Preserve Favorites web site Data" is unchecked. Then click the Settings button and change "Check for new versions of the page" from "Automatically" to "Every time I visit the page". Save these changes and then restart App Studio and see if your position changes are saved.

Thanks.

David,

Did everything you stated, and it still does not save my position changes. I did however notice that when I select DOCUMENT -> Misc. -> Autosize Children = Yes, My iframe containing my chart snaps to the right of the small gear image I am using to toggle filters with instead of staying just below it like I originally had it. So it is something to do with the Autosize Children property I'm guessing. ????

It absolutely does. Autosize children is going to move and resize the objects that have accept any changes. Your settings are a contradiction to Autosize. I didn't realize this is the same page. Btw, the changes to internet options are good even though.

You may want to turn off Autosize and set width and height to percentages so the position does not change, but the size does.

Thanks David,

I actually got it to work properly after setting the iframe Autosize settings to Keep Position while still having Autosize Children set to yes. Just had to play with the width and height percentages after that. It's looking pretty good now. Appreciate your help.

That's awesome. My pleasure to help.

I can't believe that all this went on while I was asleep.


David, any chance of some detail of what can be changed in the HTML file via a text editor, so we limit these issues.


I have had some circumstances where I had to edit the file, due to something I did in the GUI, that ended up adding two parameters to a control, where one of the parameters no longer exist, and adding a background colour to a control, then not being able to delete it, as the GUI removed it but it still existed in the underlying code.

I've ended up editing in an external text editor, saving the file without closing the text editor, so I can reverse out the change if something goes wrong.

quote:

Originally posted by David Glick:
Your item 1 is not in the product. It would need to be new functionality. Item 2 should work. I'd need to see the case for specifics.

After you add points 1 to 3 to the capabilities of the GUI editor, people will come up with item 4 and 5 and 6. There will always be an infinite number of things that a fixed GUI can't possibly hope to accomplish that people will want, web design is (still) quickly evolving. It's a race you can't keep up with, no matter how hard you try.

As a result, any HTML editing GUI that does not allow users access to the underlying code limits the capabilities of said users.

Now I'm well aware of the difficulties, I have a basic understanding of how the XML island interacts with the surrounding HTML (in fact, I implemented something of the kind for controls with multiple chained inputs).

The XML island and it's links to the surrounding HTML could be verified with some tool that could be part of the suite. Initially it's probably sufficient that it just detects that there are problems; that allows us to revert our changes until the code verifies ok again. At a later stage it could probably point out the exact errors.

In fact, I think it could be awesome if some form of version control would be integrated so that such a tool could do the reverting for us (Of course it should ask first!). I think many users (GUI users included) would appreciate being able to roll back changes after they made a mistake.

The javascript and CSS are a lot less fragile, they are more or less put inside of an IBI namespace - everything(?) IBI is prefixed with 'IBI_', so it's quite obvious when you're changing properties that you should perhaps not be changing unless you really understand what you're doing and are willing to update with a new version of the environment.

For the latter (and in general), it would also help to add a version attribute to the XML island, so that your libraries can exhibit old behaviour when it's not compatible with new behaviour in updated libraries. That's not easy, I know that firsthand.

I really need to get examples of what you want to do that you believe cannot be done in the GUI. Can anyone provide examples?

David,

For starters, my css files that I need to use to style my reports uses H# tags and P tags for styling. I can not add these elements using the gui. Not to mention that my development time is greatly increased by not being able to move back and forth.

If this is such a sticking point for you (which it sounds much more like deflection), then join my Webex with Latha and Judy that is scheduled for Friday and we can walk through what development is like in the tool.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: eric.woerle,

Eric,

This is not a sticking point for me. It is a team decision. Without proof of what cannot be done in GUI, no one will take the request seriously. As far as applying CSS that uses those tags, there is a CSS rule dialog that handles that fine. From the Embedded CSS/JS view tab, in CSS mode, you right-click and select the CSS rules option.

While on the Embedded JavaScript/CSS view tab, go to the Settings panel and select the Internal CSS radio button to put the canvas in CSS mode.

Thanks David.

David,

Sure I can apply a Rule. What I can't do is add the element to the report. I also can't add text within a DIV tag.

BTW, that radio button to flip back and forth between CSS/JS is not intuitive at all. Can we improve that to something that makes more sense?

While we are on things that I can't do in the GUI. What about elements that were added in HTML5? How do I utilize those in my web page?

http://www.w3schools.com/HTML/html5_new_elements.asp

The GUI does not use <span> tags.
The GUI does not use <button> tags, which jQuery UI uses.

Francis,

The GUI does use SPAN tags. Its the "Text" component. In Dev Studio I didn't have a way to do DIV tags. That has been added.

But since Francis brought up SPAN tags, In one of my proof of concept files that I have been working on, I embedded a few DIV tags as containers and I need to add a header in because this is going to be an accordion(I wanted to make it a H3... but since thats not a part of the tool I settled for SPAN). Now that I've added the SPAN tag, I was able to add text once, but now when I try to edit the text, I can't do it anymore.

How about responsive design? The GUI doesn't let me build a form with responsive control positioning based on if the user window is resized. Or other paneling via DIV tags, etc. Does it have a way to do this?

quote:

The GUI does use SPAN tags

Apologies. My mistake, though this information came from one of my colleagues. I gave up on using App Studio so my memory does not serve me well.

Earlier we were talking about carriage returns in the HTML. I created a brand new HTML file, referenced an existing report, imported the inputs and the majority of the values in my form shows up on one line.

 <FORM style="Z-INDEX: 2; POSITION: absolute; WIDTH: 800px; HEIGHT: 285px; TOP: 60px; LEFT: 0px" id=form1 class="IBI_ReportControlPanel IBI_rounded_m" method=post name="form1"><LABEL style="Z-INDEX: 5; POSITION: absolute; WIDTH: 31px; HEIGHT: 15px; CURSOR: default; TOP: 5px; LEFT: 5px" id=label1 class=IBI_ReportControlLabel for=listbox1 name="listbox1">Term:</LABEL><SELECT style="Z-INDEX: 6; POSITION: absolute; WIDTH: 182px; HEIGHT: 42px; TOP: 30px; LEFT: 5px" id=listbox1 class="IBI_ReportControlTarget IBI_rounded_s" tabIndex=3 multiple size=3 name="listbox1"><OPTION value=_FOC_NULL displaytext="ALL">ALL</OPTION><OPTION value="" displaytext=""></OPTION><OPTION value="Compliance Term LLB Mar 2015" displaytext="Compliance Term LLB Mar 2015">Compliance Term LLB Mar 2015</OPTION><OPTION value="DELETE Disable Faculty Access" displaytext="DELETE Disable Faculty Access">DELETE Disable Faculty Access</OPTION><OPTION value="DO NOT USE PD The Beg of Time" displaytext="DO NOT USE PD The Beg of Time">DO NOT USE PD The Beg of Time</OPTION><OPTION value="DO NOT USE PD The End of Time" displaytext="DO NOT USE PD The End of Time">DO NOT USE PD The End of Time</OPTION><OPTION value="DO NOT USE PQ The Beg of Time" displaytext="DO NOT USE PQ The Beg of Time">DO NOT USE PQ The Beg of Time</OPTION><OPTION value="DO NOT USE PQ The End of Time" displaytext="DO NOT USE PQ The End of Time">DO NOT USE PQ The End of Time</OPTION><OPTION value="MLPK Term" displaytext="MLPK Term">MLPK Term</OPTION><OPTION value="The Beginning of Time" displaytext="The Beginning of Time">The Beginning of Time</OPTION><OPTION value="The End of Time" displaytext="The End of Time">The End of Time</OPTION></SELECT><LABEL style="Z-INDEX: 7; POSITION: absolute; WIDTH: 153px; HEIGHT: 15px; CURSOR: default; TOP: 5px; LEFT: 197px" id=label2 class=IBI_ReportControlLabel for=listbox2 name="listbox2">Students Current Curriculum:</LABEL><SELECT style="Z-INDEX: 8; POSITION: absolute; WIDTH: 182px; HEIGHT: 42px; TOP: 30px; LEFT: 197px" id=listbox2 class="IBI_ReportControlTarget IBI_rounded_s" tabIndex=4 multiple size=3 name="listbox2"><OPTION value=_FOC_NULL displaytext="ALL">ALL</OPTION><OPTION value="BSc (Hons) Business Management" displaytext="BSc (Hons) Business Management">BSc (Hons) Business Management</OPTION><OPTION value="Cert ACC Pete Test" displaytext="Cert ACC Pete Test">Cert ACC Pete Test</OPTION><OPTION value="Legal Practice Course" displaytext="Legal Practice Course">Legal Practice Course</OPTION><OPTION value="MS (Hons) Law @ Lo" displaytext="MS (Hons) Law @ Lo">MS (Hons) Law @ Lo</OPTION><OPTION value="Update  F Test Two" displaytext="Update  F Test Two">Update  F Test Two</OPTION><OPTION value="aaMS (Hons) Law @ Lo" displaytext="aaMS (Hons) Law @ Lo">aaMS (Hons) Law @ Lo</OPTION></SELECT><LABEL style="Z-INDEX: 9; POSITION: absolute; WIDTH: 141px; HEIGHT: 15px; CURSOR: default; TOP: 5px; LEFT: 389px" id=label3 class=IBI_ReportControlLabel for=listbox3 name="listbox3">Current Curriculum Status:</LABEL><SELECT style="Z-INDEX: 10; POSITION: absolute; WIDTH: 182px; HEIGHT: 42px; TOP: 30px; LEFT: 389px" id=listbox3 class="IBI_ReportControlTarget IBI_rounded_s" tabIndex=5 multiple size=3 name="listbox3"><OPTION value=_FOC_NULL displaytext="ALL">ALL</OPTION><OPTION value=ACTIVE displaytext="ACTIVE">ACTIVE</OPTION></SELECT><LABEL style="Z-INDEX: 11; POSITION: absolute; WIDTH: 38px; HEIGHT: 15px; CURSOR: default; TOP: 5px; LEFT: 581px" id=label4 class=IBI_ReportControlLabel for=listbox4 name="listbox4">Cohort:</LABEL><SELECT style="Z-INDEX: 12; POSITION: absolute; WIDTH: 182px; HEIGHT: 42px; TOP: 30px; LEFT: 581px" id=listbox4 class="IBI_ReportControlTarget IBI_rounded_s" tabIndex=6 multiple size=3 name="listbox4"><OPTION value=_FOC_NULL displaytext="ALL">ALL</OPTION><OPTION value="" displaytext=""></OPTION><OPTION value="Cohort January" displaytext="Cohort January">Cohort January</OPTION></SELECT><LABEL style="Z-INDEX: 13; POSITION: absolute; WIDTH: 89px; HEIGHT: 15px; CURSOR: default; TOP: 82px; LEFT: 5px" id=label5 class=IBI_ReportControlLabel for=calendar1 name="calendar1">Start Date From</LABEL><INPUT style="Z-INDEX: 14; POSITION: absolute; WIDTH: 125px; TOP: 107px; LEFT: 5px" id=calendar1 class="IBI_ReportControlTarget IBI_CalendarControl" tabIndex=7 maxLength=10 size=10 type=text name="calendar1"><LABEL style="Z-INDEX: 15; POSITION: absolute; WIDTH: 74px; HEIGHT: 15px; CURSOR: default; TOP: 82px; LEFT: 200px" id=label6 class=IBI_ReportControlLabel for=calendar2 name="calendar2">Start Date to</LABEL><INPUT style="Z-INDEX: 16; POSITION: absolute; WIDTH: 125px; TOP: 107px; LEFT: 200px" id=calendar2 class="IBI_ReportControlTarget IBI_CalendarControl" tabIndex=8 maxLength=10 size=10 type=text name="calendar2"><LABEL style="Z-INDEX: 17; POSITION: absolute; WIDTH: 120px; HEIGHT: 15px; CURSOR: default; TOP: 82px; LEFT: 395px" id=label7 class=IBI_ReportControlLabel for=radio1 name="">Select an output type</LABEL> 

I wanted to change my calendar input fields to be date inputs. So I dropped to code (through the current convuluted process) to change my input type from text to Date (HTML5 standard element). Now I have to dig through this huge line of most of my inputs to find it.

Interestingly, in Dev Studio 8.0.08, the carriage returns appear to be missing. But, once opened in your external text editor, if you copy/paste all the code in the file to a new file, the carriage returns reappear. Then copy/paste that code back to the original file. Of course this may trigger the 'This file has been manually modified' message...

Eric,

Adding a CSS element to a report is a different topic and really should be handled separately.

New HTML5 elements cannot be done in the GUI since the product must support non-HTML5 compliant browsers like IE 8 and higher. Once the product line stops support for these older browsers, then the whole product line will be able to use HTML 5 only.

CoolGuy,

Responsive design is handled through autosize, which you used yesterday to solve an issue you had.

Most of the discussion in this thread is a 'different topic'.

The original topic regards App Studio 8.1.04 interacting with an external text editor. We've seen that files saved from the external text editor get consistently 'zeroed out'. So much for using an external text editor for HTML files that happen to be in the WebFOCUS environment but were never created by any WebFOCUS tool, GUI or otherwise. Of course the problem also occurs with files that were created by a WebFOCUS tool.

David,

Again, I'm not talking about the CSS aspect of H# tags and P tags. I can't add the element in the first place. Thats not HTML 5 and has been supported by browsers for I don't know how long. Long enough that W3Schools doesn't even mention the version that it was first available in.

You asked us to provide you examples of things that we can not do in the tool. We have provided a number of them. As developers, the landscape is constantly changing for us. We need to be able to take advantage of the latest technologies as these are the things our end users are asking for. This is the same reason IBI added Moonbeam's 3D graphics library. The same reason it uses JQuery.

HTML 5 has been around for a number of years now. IE has made 3 browsers that are partially to fully HTML 5 compliant and Chrome and FireFox are providing updates to their browser at a pace that feels like its weekly. If I need to wait till IBI decides to add the functionality to the tool, and then wait again to have the opportunity to upgrade to a version that supports more recent additions to Web Standards, then I'm going to be 3- 8 years behind in what I can provide to my end users.

This is one of the reasons why we want access to the HTML code as a part of the tool. And also why we want the tool to gracefully accept it when we do these things.

You asked us to provide examples, but when we do you responses are dismissive and have the tone of "We shouldn't be doing these things anyways"

I understand that IBI can only control so much. You can't control what browser's a customer uses, and therefore need to be able to support older versions of things. But we CAN control these things within our companies and we CAN say, this is the minimum browser version that you need to use. Why are we being told and forced to utilize outdated code because some of your customers can't get past IE7?

Earlier I talked about middle ground. Bringing balance back to the tool. Allowing enough control for IBI that it can continue to improve the product as you have been, but also enough control for us to be able to provide the things that people ask us to deliver, without making things more difficult then they really need to be. Again that is ultimately where I would hope that we can get this discussion to.

I pulled up w3schools to find out when H and P tags were first available and I noticed the tutorial on the first page. In the current tool, I can't even create this most basic example that is on the first page for beginners

 <!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<title>HTML Tutorial</title>
<body>

<h1>This is a heading</h1>
<p>This is a paragraph.</p>

</body>
</html> 

Eric,

You can add H and P elements like I've explained - in the CSS Rule dialog and apply them to objects through that dialog as well. You and others have stated what you believe you cannot do in the GUI and I have shown you that you can. The deal was that you show me what cannot be done in the GUI. As far as HTML 5 goes, it is bigger than just my areas. The product line supports IE 8 and higher and therefore none of the product line uses HTML 5 specific things.

I truly recommend that you not use the GUI for HTML pages and use an external editor to type and use your own constructs as you like. You will not be limited by anything that way. The product needs to support many user types and is created to be a GUI for users who want and can make use of the GUI. You are not such a user and that's fine. We have an HTML developer here who writes all her code in Notepad for internal applications. There are other users who use the text editor for all their FOCUS coding and that's fine for them as well.

No one is being dismissive here. It is a discussion and I believe I am providing the information requested. I have explained how to do things people want to do since it appears they did not know how to do them. I have also explained why we do not allow editing of our HTML page code. These are facts. They are not dismissive.

The dialog allows you to create a rule that applies to a control by creating a rule for div with specific the specific unique identifier,
for example div#control1.

I must be a dummy, I don't know how this is relevant.

David,

I'm well aware that I can put div#control1 into the CSS. What I am saying is I have the following:

 h1, h2, h3, h4 { margin: 0;  line-height: 1.25; }
h1 {font-size: 1.5em;}/*18px*/
h2 {font-size: 1.333em;}/*16px*/
h3 {font-size: 1.25em;}/*15px*/
h4 {font-size: 1.167em;}/*14px*/
h5 {font-size: 1.083em;}/*13px*/
h6 {font-size: 0.917em;}/*11px*/ 

And maybe I want to define my H1, H2, H3 to be underlined when the parent class is "Title". And I want it to be italics when the parent class is "Content". I define it this way, because I want the context and semantics of the header tag. This is how CSS works. I shouldn't have to specifically decalare a class for each DIV/SPAN just because. I would waste a lot of time redifining the Block Status, sizing and other aspects of each element. Instead of enhancing what is already available for me.

I also fail to understand how statements like this:

quote:

I truly recommend that you not use the GUI for HTML pages and use an external editor to type and use your own constructs as you like

are not dismissive.

As you have mentioned, there is a lot of functionality within the XML islands. It doesn't make sense to live completely outside of that. I again come back to my request for middle ground. I fail to understand why we can't find some balance between our needs?

I'm going to have to stay up all night to contribute to these, seems its the only way to get a question answered.