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Wednesday, February 8, 2017PrintSubscribe
Customizing the Menu in Touch UI

The menu offers the user access to the pages in your application. The default location of the menu is in the toolbar at the top of the screen. Top level pages will be displayed as tabs in the toolbar. Nested pages can be accessed by pressing on the parent tab. Page icons will be displayed in the dropdown menu. The Quick Launch area of the sidebar will display up to five page icons, if any have been defined. The user can view a full list of pages by pressing the “Apps” icon (three by three grid of dots).

The site menu displayed in the application toolbar at the top of the screen.

If the screen width is insufficient to display the full menu, then the remaining options will be grouped under a “More” option.

If the screen is too narrow to display all menu options, a "More" option will be displayed.

If it is not possible to fit three or more pages, then the menu will be hidden.

The menu is hidden on very small devices.

The user can still access the full menu by pressing the hamburger icon in the top left corner. If any page icons are defined, then a grid of these icons will be displayed in the menu panel.

The menu panel will display a grid of page icons.

The full site map will be displayed if no page icons are defined, or when the user presses “More” in the menu panel.

The full site menu is visible in the menu panel.

Moving the Menu to the Sidebar

Depending on project requirements, it may be desirable to move the menu from the toolbar to the sidebar. One way of changing the location is to change “Menu Location” property under the Touch UI section of the Features page in the Project Wizard.

The other way to change the menu location is to set the ui.menu.location property in the “~/WebSite/touch-settings.json” file to “sidebar”. We will use this technique.

Start the app generator. Press on the project name, and press “Open” to reveal the project folder in File Explorer. Navigate to the WebSite folder, and double-click the “touch-settings.json” file to open in your default text editor. It is recommended to use Visual Studio or other editor that supports syntax highlighting and validation.

Opening the "touch-settings.json" file under the WebSite folder of the project directory.

Replace or merge the contents of the file with the following:

{
  "ui": {
    "menu": {
      "location": "sidebar",
      "apps": {
        "tiles": null,
        "location": null
      }
    }
  }
}

The ui.menu.location property has been set to “sidebar”.

Switch back to the browser, and refresh the app. The menu will now be rendered in the sidebar.

The Touch UI menu rendered in the sidebar.

Changing the Location of the “Apps” Icon

The “Apps” icon offers access to the full site menu. By default, it is displayed in the Quick Launch area of the sidebar.

The "Apps" icon is displayed in the Quick Launch area of the sidebar.

The “Apps” icon location can be changed using the ui.menu.apps.location property. The default value, shown in the picture above, is “sidebar”. The icon can also be placed in the toolbar. Make the following change to your touch-settings.json file:

{
  "ui": {
    "menu": {
      "location": "sidebar",
      "apps": {
        "tiles": null,
        "location": "toolbar"
      }
    }
  }
}

Save the file, and refresh the web page. The result of the change can be seen below. Notice that an additional page icon is now displayed in the Quick Launch area.

The "Apps" icon is rendered in the toolbar.

Disabling the “Apps” grid

Activating the “Apps” icon, or opening the menu panel on a small device, will show a grid of page icons. The rest of the pages can be accessed by pressing the “More” button.

The "Apps" icon will display an "Apps" grid if any page icons are available.

The “Apps” grid can be disabled by setting the ui.menu.apps.tiles property to “false”. Make the corresponding change to your touch-settings.json file:

{
  "ui": {
    "menu": {
      "location": "sidebar",
      "apps": {
        "tiles": false,
        "location": "toolbar"
      }
    }
  }
}

Save the file, and refresh the app. Press the “Apps” icon in the sidebar or toolbar. The full site menu will be shown, bypassing the “Apps” grid.

Disabling tiles will bypass the "Apps" grid.

Friday, February 3, 2017PrintSubscribe
Custom Logo and Theme

Universal Business Apps (UBA) created with Code On Time are designed to run on desktop and mobile devices.  UBAs may be packaged as native applications and also work in the web browser in online and offline modes. Each app store dictates certain user interface requirements. The new theme framework of Touch UI 2017 makes it easy to fulfill them.

Native applications are distributed through app stores of the operating system verndors. These app stores have a common requirement not to place your logo directly in the user interface, making it visible at all times. The focus must be on application functionality rather than on company branding.

At the same time, it is important to keep the user aware of your brand. Touch UI makes this easy.

Consider the following logo of a fictitious company:

image

Let’s incorporate this logo into an application created with Code On Time or Cloud On Time.

Creating a Theme Accent

The default theme of the application is Light with Aquarium accent.

image

We will choose Social accent as a basis for the customization.

image

Create a copy of the file ~/touch/touch-accent.social.json and name it touch-accent.acme.json. Open the new file in your favorite text editor.

image

Change the “name” to “Acme”. Find and replace the color #3b5999 with #006940 everywhere in the file. Change header.icon.default from #eee to #ee3a43.  Also change the value of properties button.promo.icon.default and buttons.menu.icon.default to #ee3a43.

Both #006940 and #ee3a43 represent the codes of the main colors used in the log. You can use the standard CSS color names, such as “green” and “red”.

Save the file, switch back to your application, proceed to Themes section under Settings, and select the new theme “Acme”.

image

The application colors will change to match the branding of our fictitious company. It only took a few minutes to give your app a branded look-and-feel.

image

image

image

image    image

Changing Application Name

The name of the app needs to be changed as well. By default, the name will be derived from the page header text specified in the project settings. If the project’s settings for the header is blank, then the name will read as “Code on Time” or “Cloud On Time”.

image

There is configuration file in the root of your project, called ~/touch-settings.json. It controls the application behavior and appearance. Open the file and specify appName property to provide a name for the app.

image

Do not use the brand name there. Instead specify the name that reflects the purpose of the app. Let’s use Inventory Manager for this example. Save the file and refresh the page. The new app name will be visible in the top left corner of the toolbar.

image

Explicit Branding

The best place to display your branding is the Splash Screen and Account Manager.

The splash screen is displayed briefly when the user starts the app.

image

The picture on the left side of the screen and the application name can be replaced with alternative images.

Add a new configuration element splash to the file ~/touch-settings.json, as shown in the screenshot below.

image

Properties logo and background must reference the high-resolution images for the branding of your app. You will need to keep the balance between the quality of the images and their size.

The duration property controls the duration that the splash screen is displayed to users in milliseconds.

Restart the app and see the splash screen displayed.

image

Your branding is also displayed when the user is automatically logged into the app, or when account manager is activated.

image

Disabling Themes in Settings

If you do not wish the theme and accent to be changed by the application users, then add settings section to the ~/touch-settings.json with theme option disabled.

image

Additional settings options can be disabled as needed. The property settings.disabled will prevent the user from modifying any settings.

image

Further Customization

If your projects requirements call for a prominient display of branding, then you can add a logo to the application toolbar with the help of CSS. Create a file under ~/touch folder with the following rule:

image

This result of customization is shown next.

image

image

Friday, September 9, 2016PrintSubscribe
Data View Fields

Every database entity contains a list of properties, stored as columns in the table. These columns are represented by fields in the model and controller. When an entity requires a repeated, varying amount of related information, these properties are externalized to a separate table. This detail entity must be defined as a model in the project, and a data view can be placed under the master entity to display a list of these items.

Let’s take the Northwind sample database as an example. Every order contains a discrete list of properties that are represented as columns in the database. Any number of details for the order can be added. Each order detail contains an OrderID foreign key column, which refers to OrderID primary key of the order record.

Orders and Order Details table and relationship.

In the default app created by Code On Time app generator, a field is created for every column present in the database entity.

Orders form with no child info.

The natural next step is to display a list of details in the order form.

Make sure the sample project contains models for both Orders and Order Details database entities. Start the Project Designer. In the Project Explorer, switch to the Controllers tab. Right-click on the “Orders / Fields” node, and press “New Field”.

Adding a new field to Orders controller.

Enter the following properties:

Property Value
Name Details
Type DataView
Data View Controller OrderDetails
Data View grid1
Filter Field #1 OrderID

Press OK to save the new field. Next, drag the new Details field onto “Orders / Views / editForm1” to create a data field in the order form.

Dropping Details field onto 'editForm1' view of Orders controller.     Details data field has been created in 'editForm1' view of Orders controller.

On the toolbar, press Browse to generate the application. Navigate to the Orders page and select a record. Notice that a list of related details are displayed at the bottom of the form.

A list of order details is displayed in the order form.

This data view field be placed in any position on the form, or placed in a custom location using a form template.