This is a small feature but fixes something that has always bugged me.
In Application Express there is the Start Stop Table item. Which is very useful for form layout especially when building forms with large textarea's.
The problem was there was no way easy way access the Start Stop Table itself with javascript or CSS since it didn't have any discerning attributes. Well that has all changed in APEX 3.1 as the Start Stop Table gets some of the same attributes as a regular item does.
Start Stop Table's will get the id attribute set to the Item Name just like regular items , Start Stop Tables will also insert attributes from HTML Form Element Attributes property , agian just like a regular APEX item.
You can see a very simple usage example here http://apex.oracle.com/pls/otn/f?p=11933:137.
I can definitely see this being used for some more dynamic and just plain prettier forms and layouts, there are a few spots in the APEX builder slated to get some treatment from this.
As with my last few posts , and my next couple, this isn't the most WizBang feature but the impact if properly used can be huge.
This is one big long rant and bounces around a bit but stay with me :)
I'll admit it I'm a hypocrite when it comes to web development. I'll rant and rave about about standards compliance and the right way to do things.
http://carlback.blogspot.com/search/label/standards
http://carlback.blogspot.com/2006/11/javascript-pet-peeves-for-some-reason.html
Then I'll turn right around and use tables for layout, and add my own namespaced attributes to HTML elements and then tell people not to worry about standards mode and XHTML validation.
http://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?messageID=1138556#1138556
http://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?messageID=2051001#2051001
http://forums.oracle.com/forums/thread.jspa?messageID=1025081#1025081
http://forums.oracle.com/forums/message.jspa?messageID=2271436#2271436
http://carlback.blogspot.com/2006_09_01_archive.html
http://asktom.oracle.com/pls/asktom/f?p=100:11:0::::P11_QUESTION_ID:561667500346126206#611615600346656142
You might ask how I can do this and look myself in the mirror, especially some of you that have been on the the receiving end of the ranting, well let me tell you there are three very important reasons.
TIME , MONEY , REALITY
TIME and MONEY you never have enough, neither does your boss/company/client/etc. And you need to finish the current project you are on yesterday and get started on the next project the day before that , sound familiar ;)
Getting to 95% standards compliance is easy, that last 5% is what is the killer, and nobody even cares except some buggy W3C validator.
http://blog.360.yahoo.com/blog-TBPekxc1dLNy5DOloPfzVvFIVOWMB0li?p=736
XHTML is not the solution to a problem that concerns anybody except the guys who have to write
parsers that convert markup into DOM trees.
Building a tableless layout is all great and good. Except then you have to spend extra time and effort QA'ing because the different browsers render CSS different, or not at all (more on that later).
Even if the newest browser version renders things better if you are like most people and want to reach the biggest audience then you need to support older browsers for a long time (IE 6 is not going away anytime soon).
REALITY is the 800 pound gorilla and that gorilla's main branch to beat you over the head with is my favorite, the most useful and most ubiquitous piece of software in the world, the web browser.
It's not my fault I didn't do it.
MS did it with IE.
Netscape did it with Netscape. (RIP)
Mozila Group did it with Firefox.
Apple did with Safari.
Opera did with Opera.
And what did they do?
They are the ones that don't render things correctly and even more importantly they don't render consistently , and let me tell you the big secret, they probably never will unless they all decide to start using the same rendering engine, which isn't going to happen, and truthfully shouldn't, competition is good and will result in better browsers. Look how much better IE7 is compared to IE6 and IE 8 just passed the ACID 2 test which is huge, and the reason for these improvements because Firefox is so much better than IE, at least for now.
Don't get my wrong standards compliance is a worthy goal, but like most things in this world it's the journey not the destination that is the worthier part.
As you strive to get to 100% standards compliance your page weight goes down, your CSS gets separated out of the HTML to where it belongs. And the closer you get the easier it is but it's a never ending process, HTML 5 will be here sooner than you know it, and this will start over again.
On APEX's end we will continue to make sure the HTML we generate is as close as we can make it to XHTML compliant as we can while still supporting the widest range of browsers in the easiest way.
PS. NO!!!! YOU STILL CAN'T USE FONT TAGS ANYMORE, THAT IS TOO HYPOCRITICAL EVEN FOR ME!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
I'm a web developer first and foremost so this comment really hit home.
And it was found on a Slashdot article which makes it better/worse. It's the first comment down and I doubt it will move down from the top.
>>
I once joked with a colleague that Internet Explorer has probably wiped billions off pounds off the world economy. I laughed, paused for a moment, and realised it's probably completely true. What could the world have done with all those countless hours hacking their CSS to support the trash that is Internet Explorer?
Doesn't it make you depressed?
Simon
>>
Good job Simon I don't know who you are but that is spot on.
All this is in response to a Blog posting on the IE blog http://blogs.msdn.com/ie/default.aspx where they release the name of the next IE version.
Name??
Are you freaking kidding me?
What about standards compliance??
What about fixing layout bugs??
I have a real good name for Internet Explorer but I can't write it in this family friendly blog!
Of course fixing these things might impact Adobe's and Microsoft's little Air vs Silverlight war and who would want that?
PS: I hate IE and all the time of mine it has wasted, and to be fair I used to hate Netscape 4.5 just as much for the same reason.
LONG LIVE FIREFOX!!!!!!!!!!!
So someone sent me a link from the Internet Archive for something and I was like hey I want to look at my old sites. Though it looks like the Internet Archive misses quite a bit of the images and flash files but still there was a pretty amazing amount still around.
meetingdoodle.com < I think the name is description enough, a php application that would allow people to upload and comment on the doodles they did in meetings, it would automatially thumbnail and organize them.
http://web.archive.org/web/20010306164224/http://www.meetingdoodle.com/
I have all these images somewhere around 30-40 of them and will have to put them up.
And loungetank.com which has always been my catch all site for anything I want to do, and yes I still have it and no you can't have it because it's mine and I still like the name!
loungetank.com is now APEX based and hosted on shellprompt.com , though there is nothing there for public consumption at moment.
But the stuff that used to be on loungetank is still awesome, at least to me.
There is the alpha of the Geo News Reader I mentioned in my 5 years at Oracle post.
http://web.archive.org/web/20020325231905/www.loungetank.com/geo_news.html the actual running version was much more elaborate, the layout kinda looks like the APEX Object Browser doesn't it :).
And look at at all the different front pages I went through. Since almost everything was built on Cocoon and I was really into building XSLT's
http://web.archive.org/web/20011201045448/http://www.loungetank.com/
http://web.archive.org/web/20030201210450/http://www.loungetank.com/
http://web.archive.org/web/20030530085533/http://www.loungetank.com/
I still have most of this stuff on ZIP disks (remember those!!!) and now I'm going to have to dig through them to see what I can bring back even for just fun.
Anyway if you've ever had a site that you just kinda forgot about or changed so radically it's not the same site you should take a look for it in the Internet Archive, it pretty interesting seeing all the differences.
Customized report templates are one of the often overlooked tools in Application Express. While most people are happy with just the standard report templates with minor changes. But in some cases a standard report won't do the trick as in this post here were the poster wanted to show information on 50 different columns , one record at a time.
One solution I've used before is to provide a customized named row template, as in this example here http://apex.oracle.com/pls/otn/f?p=11933:108
While this solution shows a simple layout very complex layouts can be created with fully customizable HTML / CSS / IMAGES and using the conditional row display logic differences based on data returned can provide even another level of customization.
