Has IBI enabled the Layer feature in Maintain to work at runtime, so one could do something like:

"Winform Set Form1.Layer1.Visible to Yes/No;" ??

I have used the 'Layer' feature of the MDE Form Editor to help build dynamic forms. But to do so, I've had to write some large Cases to show and hide the form controls for the different display situations. This is OK for small records, with only a few controls and labels, but it can get to be a real big pain with more complex screens.

Specifically, I'm thinking of trying to implement a tabbed interface on a Maintain Form, with a background layer and a separate layer for each tab, and controlling the visibility of the layers with simple syntax, instead of a lot of fussy coding that's difficult to write and maintain.

This would enable Maintain to deal with a lot of data fields gracefully, without a lot of bouncing from form to form, and add some modern UI techniques to the product. I don't think it would be that difficult a problem for the Maintain programmers, if it is not already available in a newer release them my 7.6.8

Thanks,

I wrote something about 5-10 years ago that does this.

I still have the mnt module. From memory its self contained, not sure if it will work on later version of maintain.

Dave

I agree it would be an effective addition to the Forms to be able to Tab different forms. And whilst I also think that it would be relatively easy to implement, it would be nice to hear from the programmers themselves. Mark?

In the meanwhile I have utilised the HTML Painter Tabs to mimic this behaviour. Not ideal but it does work, albeit not as smoothly as I would like, persistence is not available and each tab has to have it's own commit / rollback, and there are multiple forms. Actually sounds like everything you are trying to avoid!

There is no new feature to allow for layering. Even in 7.7 you have to Show / Hide each individual object on a form. I will speak to proggramming about it. A new feature request from a customer is the best way for something like this to get considered.

Mark

Mark,

Looks like I'll have to submit a NFR, but I'll wait till I hear what you get from the programmers.

Waz,

I'd be very interested in what you did long ago.

Alan,

I'm not sure I understand what you are doing with the HTML Painter and Maintain. Could you expand on it a bit ?

Thanks all,

Dave - Please open an NFR as soon as possible. We can get to work on it!

Mark

Dave, I'll get my example code working and send it to you.

Dave

Basically create a Maintain with multiple forms. When calling the maintain, allow for parameters to process one section of code and call a form.

In the HTML painter create a tab for each form, and call the maintain with parameters to display each form.

Use javascript for x-iframe scripting to pick up any navigation parameters from one page to another. So as an example, if you select an employee in tab1, in the background run the maintain in tab2 to pick up the education for that employee, so selecting tab2 already has the correct information.

You can make it easier to use by saving changes to all the tab forms by issuing one save and more scripting.

Does that make more sense? If you need support for NFR, I can help.

Alan,

Thanks for the explanation. I get what you are doing, and it is very clever, but it seems to involve a lot of patches between WF, Maintain, HTML and Javascript. Not something I would want to do on a regular basis

Hopefully the NFR will come to pass, and we can do it an easier way !

Mark,

I have submitted the NFR on Case # 62282555. Any help moving it along would be appreciated.

Hey Dave - It will be in programming today. I will report back on the feasibility of the request.

Mark

You know, I asked this same question 10 years ago, and was told that it is to assist in the development of the winforms.

If it is implemented, then this will be very useful.