User Interface

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User Interface
Tuesday, December 5, 2017PrintSubscribe
Tab Bar

Page of an application built with Touch UI represents an individual mini-app, also known as Single Page App or SPA. Shared navigation system of application links together multiple SPAs.

Developers can assign icons to individual pages to signify their purpose. Icons are displays at the bottom of the sidebar on the left side of the page and in the drop down menus at the top of the page.

Sidebar displays page icons when specified in apps created with Touch UI.   Page icons are visible in the dropdown navigation menus in apps created with Touch UI and Code On Time app generator.

The sidebar provides easy access to the first three or four pages with icons, which works great on larger screens. The sidebar is not visible on the smaller devices. Touch UI introduces a new method of providing quick access to important pages called Tab Bar.

Tab Bar is automatically displayed at the bottom of the screen whenever the sidebar is not visible

Tab Bar is displayed at the bottom of the screen if at least two icons are defined in the menu of the app created with Code On Time.

Tab Bar disappears as soon as the sidebar becomes visible, which may happen if device orientation has changed or when the app window is resized.

Tab Bar is hidden when the sidebar is visible to the user in apps based on Touch UI.

The width of tabs will automatically increase on large screens.

Tab Bar appears as soon as the sidebar stops being visible in the app based on Touch UI.

Tabs automatically expand and collapse. Some tabs may be shifted off-screen when the minimal tab width is reached. The invisible tabs are replaced with “More” button if there is not enough space to fit all of them at the bottom of the screen. Invisible tab icons are displayed when “More” button is activated on the Tab Bar.

'More' button is displayed when some of the tabs are not able to fit on screen in application based on Touch UI.  Invisible tab icons are displayed when 'More' button is activated on the Tab Bar in app created with Code On Time.

If you do prefer not to have the Tab Bar then turn if “off” by entering the following configuration property in ~/touch-settings.json file:

{
  "ui": {
    "menu": {
      "tabbar": false
    }
  }
}

If you love the Tab Bar, then consider enabling this feature on any screen size by settings ui.menu.tabbar to true.

{
  "ui": {
    "menu": {
      "tabbar": true
    }
  }
}

This setting will remove icons from the sidebar and transfer them to the permanently visible Tab Bar at the bottom of the screen.

Set 'ui.menu.tabbar' property in touch-settings.json to 'true' to permanently enable the Tab Bar in app created with Code On Time.

Page icons will be visible on a screen of any size.

Tab Bar displays icons of important pages in app based on Touch UI.

Notifications displayed in the app will move the Tab Bar and the “promo” button upwards.

Notifications displayed in the app will move the Tab Bar and the “promo” button upwards in apps based on Touch UI, created with Code On Time.

The tab bar will slide down to the bottom of the screen when the notification is dismissed.

Friday, November 17, 2017PrintSubscribe
Notifications

Users love getting a confirmation for their actions but would not appreciate if the flow of data input is interrupted with blocking popups. Touch UI now has a built-in ability to automatically confirm Update, Insert, Delete data manipulations and Sort, Group, Search/Filter actions. In the screenshot below you can see an “Update” notification displayed at the bottom of the screen after product has been changed. Notification slide up from the bottom and stay for a short duration visible to the user without blocking interactions with the app. Notification automatically slides away or disappears if the user taps on it.

A notification confirming user action in app with Touch UI.

Notifications take the full display width on devices with small form factor.

A notification on a small factor device takes the entire width of the screen in the app created with Code On Time.

Modify ~/touch-settings.json to allow displaying notifications on the left side of the screen on large display devices.

{
  "ui": {
    "notify": {
      "location": "left"
    }
  }
}

Action notifications can be displayed on the left side of the screen in apps with Touch UI.

It is easy to setup your own notification on any action. For example, set Notification property of Actions / ag2 (Form) / a4 – Update, Save when Edit action in Products controller as follows:

Property Value
Notification Saved "{ProductName}" priced at {UnitPrice}.

This will result in the following notifications:

Custom notifications in Touch UI apps can reference field values.

The framework will automatically assign standard notifications to Insert, Update, and Delete commands in your data controllers if there is no value there.

Command Name Standard Notification
Insert Saved - {0}
Update Saved - {0}
Delete {$selected} deleted

Specifying {0} will include the value of the first visible data field in the view. Indexes are zero-based.

You can also {$selected} to specify the number of selected items or {$count} to specify the total number of items in the view.

If you want to disable a standard notification for a particular action, then enter $none in the Notification property of the action.

The fastest way to change the format of the standard notification is to change ^Saved^ and ^Deleted^ tokens using Visual Studio in the file Solution Name / Code On Time Items/ ClientLibrary.en-US.txt. Note that the culture in the name of the file may be different for your project. Save the changes in the file and re-generate the project. Use Ctrl+F5 to refresh the page to force the browser to load the update resources.

If the business rule forces a display of a message with Result.ShowMessage or Result.ShowViewMessage, then a corresponding notification will be displayed with medium duration.

Here is an example of SQL Business Rule handling a custom action.

set @Result_ShowMessage = 'Archived "' + @ProductName + '" product.'
set @Result_Continue = 1

A custom notification emitted in an SQL business rule implemented in the app with Touch UI.

Standard notifications are always displayed with short duration.

The standard notifications can be displayed with ui.notify.enabled property. The default duration of the notifications expressed in milliseconds is defined as follows:

{
  "ui": {
    "notify": {
      "enabled": true,
      "duration": {
        "short": 2500,
        "medium": 5000,
        "long": 10000
      }
    }
  }
}

JavaScript business rules can send notifications as follows:

$app.touch.notify("Hello World");
$app.touch.notify({ text: "Hello World", duration: "long" });

The duration can be expressed in milliseconds. If force option is specified with value true, then any visible notification will be dismissed and your own notification will get displayed instead.

Future releases of the framework will further enhance notifications with an ability to provide a custom action or callback function that can activated by a button displayed directly in the notification.

Thursday, November 16, 2017PrintSubscribe
Peformance Improvements and Notifications

Code On Time release 8.6.9.0 brings a significant improvement in the data processing framework and the new feature Notifications in Touch UI.

Performance Improvements

This release will speed up data interactions of the application framework with your database. Application always counts the number of available rows whenever your access any data for the first time. It uses an SQL query to count the total number of records to perform data paging when needed. Subsequent retrieval of pages of data does not require record counting. Starting with this release, the initial counting has been eliminated when only a small number of records available for retrieval. 

The change in the implementation will provide performance gains of up to 25% or more. This applies both to Classic and Touch UI when you re-generate your project.

Forms with the large number of static lookups (Drop Down List, Radio Button List, List Box) will see a significant boost.

Notifications

Action notifications provide and effective method of confirming user actions without stopping the flow of user interactions with the app. Fleeting messages are displayed at the bottom of the screen to inform the user about data manipulations. Custom notifications can also be displayed when needed.

Custom action notification displayed in th app with Touc UI created with Code On Time.

Other Features and Ehancements

Popups is the standard feature of Touch UI. We display options with choice for dropdown menus, context menus, etc. Previous implementations have blocked user interaction with app until the popup is dismissed with Esc key or when the user clicks/taps outside.

The new release significantly modifies this behavior for end users working with the mouse. The drop downs on menu bar will automatically open when user hovers over. The entire toolbar set of elements is fully responsive when any popups are open. If the “mouse” user clicks ouside of the boundaries of the popup, then the user interface will respond. Use Esc key or click on static elements of GUI to prevent interactions and close the popup instead.

Users of touch screen will see no change in the behavior of popups.

This modification makes Touch UI behave in a mouse-friendly way.

Touch UI is now even more "mouse-friendly" than ever.

The styling of Calendar view has been changed.

New peresentation of the Calendar view style.

Previously a popup with a card representing the selected event has opened when the event was clicked or tapped on. Now the first available action is executed instead.

Clicking on the event in the Calendar view style will execute the first available action.

The up/down/right arrows in the lookups are now appearing larger as we are switching to material icons.

Material icons are now used in the implementation of right/down/up arrows in lookups.

Other notable changes:

  • Calendar view style is correctly rendered for dataview fields in modal forms.
  • Method DataView.findAction will return null if an empty path is specified.
  • TimeSpan fields can be passed to SQL business rules.
  • Increased speed of $settings method when verifying touch-settings.json variables on the client.
  • Popup menus dropped from the menu bar will auto-select on hover faster than when a standard popup menu is opened for improved user experience on mouse-pointer devices.
  • We have removed "apple" trick for numeric inputs. The numeric input type implemented through native HTML input for numbers will be replaced with the custom keyboard in the next release.
  • Surveys allow unlimited text input in multi-line string fields. This fixed the problem with Batch Edit form and multi-line fields.
  • BatchEdit correctly clears selected key list (checkboxes) after successful execution.
  • BatchEdit displays system notification about the number of updates items.
  • Method $app.execute now returns a "deferred" object to allow "done", "then", and "fail"
  • Methods $app.alert and $app.confirm now return "deferred" object to allow "done", "then", "fail".
  • If $settings('ui.menu.location') == 'sidebar' then content pages display with a sidebar.
  • Added integration with Offline Sync to provide "cloud" icon
  • Event "before[panel-type]panelshow.app" event provides "panel" property with "type" and "id". List of items is in "items" property of event.
  • Calendar View now supports the following tags:
    • calendar-day(-disabled)
    • calendar-week(-disabled)
    • calendar-month(-disabled)
    • calendar-year(-disabled)
    • calendar-agenda(-disabled)
  • Calendar now runs first action in Grid scope instead of showing card, handles double click, fixed offset color boxes, month events no longer grow.
  • Core.css now contains glyphicons for Classic UI.
  • Fixed issue (again) where ASPX projects navigate to "/login" instead of "/login.aspx".
  • Fixed issue with server authentication generating incorrect code.
  • Added URL Decryption in @Url_XXX SQL business rule parameters.
  • Internal static page references will open in fullscreen mode when accessed from a non-modal page.
  • Static page navigation uses promises when making remote calls.
  • Integrated initial daf-odp.js into the framework and setup.
  • Flag mobile.busy is set to the same value as dataView._busy argument to ensure global “gray glass pane” on top of the GUI.
  • Auto-open menu options on hover.
  • Deleting and retyping incorrect unmatched value does not clear the selection in the drop down list.
  • Enhanced auto-completion of text in Lookup/AutoComplete/DropDownList. BackSpace and Del buttons do not cause auto-completion.
  • Fixed the typo in the label reference. It is again possible to access Sort, Filter, and Group menu options in the context menu.
  • Advanced Search now works with the data controllers based on rowsets created with the business rules.
  • Fixed. Group BY is not supported with controllers using DataTable for resultset.
  • Synchronization of Distinct page requestes performed by advanced search form is disabled to improve performance.