Progress
AppBuilder
Developer’s Guide
Creating and Configuring a SmartPanel Instance
Creating a SmartPanel is quite easy. After you determine which SmartPanel will meet your needs, follow these steps:
- Click on the SmartPanel icon in the Object Palette:
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- When the Choose SmartPanel dialog box opens, select the needed SmartPanel and choose OK:
NOTE: If you prefer, you can right-click on the tool icon, instead, and select the desired SmartPanel from the menu that opens there.
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- Position the mouse cursor over a bare spot in your workspace and click to place the object. If you have other SmartObjects in place, AppBuilder might open an Advisor dialog box and offer to create SmartLinks. Examine the offer and accept it if the proposed SmartLinks seem appropriate.
- Click on the object’s menu button and choose Properties. The Property Sheet dialog box opens. The sheet for the iconic Navigation Panel is shown here:
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- Change the instance handle to one that more accurately describes the role of this SmartPanel in your application.
- The properties for appearance and behavior vary from Panel to Panel. Click the Edit button to inspect them (you can also reach them directly by choosing Instance Properties from the menu-button menu). Change those that do not meet your needs.
Navigation SmartPanel Properties
A Navigation SmartPanel has three properties. You can change those that do not meet your needs:
- Show Border — Normally set. Clearing this check box turns off the border (implemented as a Rectangle) around the buttons.
- Edge Pixels — Normally 2. You can set the value to as much or as little as you like, with differing visual effects. Note that the number of pixels between the edge of the button and the inner edge of the rectangle does not change—the Rectangle’s border grows inward toward the buttons rather than outward, in other words.
- Internationalization — (Applies only to the iconic Navigation Panel.) To conform your software to cultural conventions, you can choose which button—leftmost or rightmost—will set the pointer to the first record in a data stream. You can often determine the convention for a particular culture by looking at the direction in which the local language is written and read.
Save/Update SmartPanel Properties
A Save/Update SmartPanel has only two properties. Change either or both, if you wish:
- TableIO Type — Normally Save. Setting this option to Update requires the user to first choose the Update button before the fields will make themselves editable.
Save causes the fields to be editable by default. In either case, once the user has edited a field, choosing the Update button (now labelled Save) writes the changes back to the database immediately. If you also have a transaction (Commit/Undo) Panel installed, your application will journal the changes so that it can undo them again, if the user elects not to eventually commit.
- Behavior of Add Button — Normally prompts for one new record. Setting to Add Multiple causes your application to prompt for an arbitrary number of new records without requiring the user to choose the Add button again.
Transaction SmartPanel Properties
There are no programmer-modifiable instance properties for the Commit (Transaction) SmartPanel, apart from the object identifier.
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