Progress
AppBuilder
Developer’s Guide


Organizer Object Roles

Each type of organizer object has different characteristics and capabilities. They are only superficially interchangeable, if at all, and you should choose accordingly.

The SmartObjects are the most capable, and you must use them if you are building ADM-compliant applications. They all incorporate the logic needed to integrate other SmartObjects, and offer considerable savings in programming time. They also are the only organizer objects that support paging. The major differences between them are:

The basic Window and Dialog objects do not have ADM Smart logic. Because they lack this supporting logic, you cannot place SmartObjects in them. You can place other objects in them, such as basic Frames and field-level objects, and ActiveX objects. Apart from the differences in how Smart they are, Windows and SmartWindows serve comparable functional purposes, as do Dialogs and SmartDialogs.

Basic Frame objects are essentially static organizers. Their role is to provide a visual context for the field-level objects they contain. Additionally, Frame objects allow you to define the order in which pressing the TAB key will traverse their contents.

Rectangles are also static organizers, used to provide a visual context for other objects. Unlike Frames, Rectangles do not create a traversal group; their role is entirely visual.

The SmartContainer tool—not to be confused with the Simple SmartContainer—creates no object. AppBuilder provides the SmartContainer tool as a convenient way for you to associate independent organizer objects of the class SmartContainer, such as SmartWindows, with one another in parent/child relationships.

The balance of this chapter discusses the available organizer objects in more detail.


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