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Oracle Tips by Burleson |
User
Interface
The user interface section includes Themes,
Templates, User Interface Defaults, Lists of Values (LOV’s), and
Shortcuts.
Themes and Templates are covered in a later
chapter of this book.
User Interface Defaults
User Interface
Defaults provide the ability to set default properties for tables and
views and columns. These defaults are used by the wizards when
creating reports and forms. Not only does this feature provide a
consistent name for the components placed on an application page, but
it also saves time because they are defined ahead of time.
To create a user interface default, navigate to
the Shared Components page and click on the User Interface Defaults
link. This will bring up a list of the tables in the parsing schema.
An experienced developer would encourage new developers to switch the
view to Details by selecting the Details item in the View select list
and clicking the Go button.
1.
Click on the DEMO_ORDERS table link.
2.
On the next page, click on the Create User Interface Defaults
button.
The next page is the Table Defaults page
shown in Figure 6.9. It shows several attributes for each column.
When a report or a form is created and columns are added to that
report or form, they will obtain the defaults set here. The order in
which the column will be displayed can be established by setting the
sequence and whether or not the column should be included.
3.
Click on the UNIT_PRICE column link to edit the default
properties.
4.
There are several properties that can be set for the UNIT_PRICE
column. Some of them are:
-
Label: This is the default label, or column
heading, for the page item when it is added to a page.
-
Mask: For dates and numbers, this is
valuable because the formatting can be set here once and it will
not have to be done every time a report or form is created.
-
Display As: For dates, the developer may
want the default to be a Date Picker. This is also really helpful
for large text fields where it is desirable to default this to
Text Area.
-
Default Value: This is another valuable
property to set for a date. An example of this is setting the
default to today’s date by entering the following text in this
property.
-
( select to_char( sysdate, :PICK_DATE_FORMAT_MASK
) from dual )
-
Help Text: If the Help Text feature is used
in an application, this can be an incredible time saver.
-
List of Values: If the column is a select
list and uses a List of Values, it can be defined by using the
List of Values tab.
5.
For the UNIT_PRICE column, make the following selections:
-
Report Defaults à Mask: &PICK_DATE_FORMAT_MASK.
-
Tabular Form Default à Display As: Date
Picker (use application format mask).
-
Form Defaults à Mask: &PICK_DATE_FORMAT_MASK.
-
Default Value: Use the query shown above in
the Default Value bullet point.
6. Click the Apply Changes
button.
The authors of this book believe that user
interface defaults are an underutilized feature in HTML DB. To not
use this feature should be considered cruel and unusual punishment to
the developer, because they will find themselves making the same
attribute changes to page item after page item to keep things
consistent.
The above book excerpt is from:
Easy HTML-DB
Oracle Application Express
Create Dynamic
Web Pages with OAE
ISBN 0-9761573-1-4
Michael Cunningham & Kent
Crotty
http://www.rampant-books.com/book_2005_2_html_db.htm
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