This is the old topic but I'm still interesting in this. If there is not
good method to add 3rd party rendering libraries, how about enhance the
current widget? We can extends the current widgets and append some
attributes to let the widgets can work with other libraries, take the dojo
for example:
<field name="**" title="${uiLabelMap.**}"
tooltip="${uiLabelMap.**}" dojoType="dijit.form.TextBox"
trim="true"></field>
2008/5/10 Adrian Crum <[email protected]>
I submitted a patch to Jira -
https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/OFBIZ-1648. It's a start, let me know
what you think.
-Adrian
David E Jones wrote:
Adrian,
That sounds good to me. I'm always hesitant to say it because if the
inherent inaccuracy of any human communication, but I think "we're on the
same page here".
-David
On May 7, 2008, at 8:48 AM, Adrian Crum wrote:
David,
I agree that there are some cool Ajax like features that won't map
exactly to existing widgets. In that case we'll create a new widget and try
to find an HTML equivalent. So, I'm not tossing out the idea of new widgets
that have improved features, I'm suggesting let's start with adding new
features to existing widgets.
I have seen the Ajax work done in the Example component.
Regarding the alternate HTML rendering classes, I don't think those will
be needed. My thinking right now is to just evolve the existing HTML
rendering classes.
-Adrian
David E Jones wrote:
Adrian,
This sounds great for the elements that have some sort of natural
JS/AJAX extension that doesn't change what the form means or offers to the
user but instead just improves the user experience and/or efficiency.
With cases like I agree it would be great, and a REALLY cool feature,
to upgrade automatically and not require form changes or anything.
However, there are many cases where we can't automatically add JS/AJAX
extensions, but instead they represent a possible widget that is different
enough from the concept behind any of the existing form field types that it
would be weird to piggy back the functionality and try to automatically
shoe-horn it into the existing functionality.
Some of the stuff I played with recently and added, like an
auto-refresh on a screen container, is not something we would want to
automatically turn on. The other one I added recently, to submit a form in
the background and not refresh the page, is also something that I don't
think we would want to automatically turn on.
So, yes, I agree we should add some of the automatic extensions that we
can and it would be a really cool set of new features.
Stepping back to the original thingy, how does using alternate
HtmlFormRenderer classes help with this? Maybe you're not still considering
that, but I'd say if we did default fancy things (which again, I love the
idea of), we should just do those all the time unless, like you wrote, the
browser identifier is clearly one that won't support it (some of that might
need to be client side too though... I'm not sure about all of the nuances
there).
-David
On May 6, 2008, at 3:42 PM, Adrian Crum wrote:
I'm resurrecting this thread because I've spent some time looking into
the whole third party rendering library support idea and I think I have a
simple solution.
I thought about David's suggestion of having new widgets that are
effects based. I don't think that will be a good strategy because not all
browsers will have javascript enabled - which would render those widgets
useless.
A better approach I would like to propose is to use the Prototype
javascript library in combination with EXISTING widgets to improve their
response and functionality. The widget rendering code would detect if the
browser supports javascript, and output the correct HTML to accommodate the
browser.
Instead of a "live-form" widget, the existing form widget would detect
browser support, and render an improved form if the browser supports it. The
current paginated tables would use Ajax calls to scroll through pages
instead of refreshing the whole screen.
Basically, I'd like to see the cool effects and improved response
implemented without any additional work on the widget XML files.
What do you think?
-Adrian
David E Jones wrote:
I guess this is a continuation of the discussion in the thread
"uilabels and screenlet widget", and is related somewhat to part of the
stuff in issue OFBIZ-1648.
The general goal of the widgets is simple: no platform specific
artifacts. Unfortunately this isn't entirely possible, which is why we have
a very big and ugly "platform-specific" tag to delineate things that are not
generic and provide for the possible of having alternative platform things
specified together so that when rendering for a different target the
appropriate option can be selected.
As far as that applies to this topic, I'd say the best approach is to
never have any element or attribute called "dojo" or "ajax" or "rico" or
anything. In the dojo attribute for the container elements, I'm not sure
what you'd propose to put in it, ie the "some Dojo data", but in general I'd
prefer to never have anything that is so dependent on a particular
underlying technology, the widget artifacts gain efficiency by their focus
on different effects, with the underlying software taking care of the
"causes", or rather how the effects are brought about.
In other words while we wouldn't want elements that have anything to
do with "dojo" or "openrico" we would want elements to describe the effects
from those libraries we'd like to have available through the widget, and the
most appropriate is probably the Form Widget with different form and field
types (though some would certainly go elsewhere and are not form related).
Examples of that would be a new form type like "live-grid" or a new
form field type like "live-combobox" (or "dynamic-combobox" or
"server-side-combobox" or something). If we add elements like that then it
doesn't matter which AJAX library we use underneath and generate HTML/etc
for, and we can change libraries without requiring any change to the higher
level artifacts, like the form definitions.
-David
On Feb 16, 2008, at 1:34 PM, Adrian Crum wrote:
In order to accommodate 3rd party rendering libraries (Ajax, Dojo,
etc) in the screen widgets, we need to discuss how that support will appear
in the screen widget XML files.
I'll start things off with a suggestion I made in another thread.
Everyone is welcome to join in and offer their ideas. When we reach an
agreement, we can submit the results to Jira and begin building it out.
I was thinking we could simply extend the existing widgets with
additional attributes. The new attributes would pass 3rd party specific data
to the rendering classes. The new attributes are ignored by rendering
classes that don't need them. All rendering classes render all widgets in
some form - some rendering classes might have additional bells and whistles
based upon the additional attributes, while others downgrade gracefully and
still provide a usable screen rendering.
So, the widget XML would look something like this:
<container id="some-id" style="some-style" dojo="some Dojo data"
ajax="some Ajax data" foo="some foo data">
...
</container>
The additional attributes could be applied to any screen widget
element, not just the container element.
The advantage I see to this approach is it is fully backwards
compatible. We can add attributes to any screen widget element without
breaking existing rendering code.
That's it. Like I said, please add your ideas.
-Adrian
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