Fancy Menu

Earlier I made a sample on how to emulate a harmonica widget. And I also made one on glassy buttons. It is quite easy to combine these two into a pretty fancy menu. Clicking each main menu option expands it to show the options. When the mouse pointer passes over a button, it will light up. In the document I explain how I made it, and in the accompanying export you will find all sources.

Sample for Glassy Buttons in Uniface

One of the things that I keep hearing when discussing User Interface design are Glassy Buttons. It is not so difficult to create these in Uniface, you just have to think a bit outside the box. In the document I explain my way of doing it, and in the accompanying export you will find all sources.

How to put “sort direction arrows“ in column headers

For a grid widget, use the extended trigger ColumnHeader_LClicked. In this trigger you keep track of which field is sorted and in what direction. You can store this in a component variable. The text that is shown in the column header is the text of the label of the field. You can alter the text in a label using $labelproperties (introduced in Uniface 9.3). Labels do not support pictures, but ▲ and ▼ are suiteable characters. Just copy and paste these from MS Word.

If you do not use a grid widget you still can do something similar. 

See the sample for sorting in Grids and "normal" entities.

Harmonica Widget for Windows

In both web and Windows applications you see harmonica's in use.
Uniface does not have a special widget for this, but you can program simular functionality yourself.
I have made a small sample that you can download.

Recycle Uniface icons

In Uniface small pictures, icons etc are called glyphs.

When an application  is deployed the glyphs are in a .dol file.

And since the Uniface product is also a Uniface application, it comes with a .dol file.

Yesterday I wanted to reuse some Uniface icons in my own application.

I got carried away with it a bit and made a Glyph Browser.

It finds the usys.dol file that you are using, and shows all the glyphs that are in it.

You can click on a glyph to see it bigger.

Full documentation is in the Execute trigger of the Form GLYPHBROWSER.

Web functionality in Uniface Forms

Why should web developers have all the fun? I am looking at making functionality that is on the web available to all Uniface applications. Without paying much attention to RIA, Web 2.0, Cloud etc. It is not about the concept, it is about the content!

In the time that remains between consultancy visits to customer, doing Uniface migrations and all my other regular work for Compuware I am trying to build a library of small samples that show you how you can use functionality that is available on the web in a "traditional" Uniface application.

You will be suprised to see just how easy it is to add a map to the address module of your Uniface application!

I am putting samples on Uniface.info in the Uniface Downloads section, under Uniface samples. Video's for these sample will be on Youtube.

Please feel free to send me your ideas, better samples, improved versions etcetera!

These are ready now:

A very, very simple demo for the use of Google Charts.
This can be a nice alternative to using Excel or a very expensive data mining tool if you only want a few graphs in your Uniface application
-> I've put a short video for this on YouTube as well.

A simple demo for the use of Google Maps.
Every Uniface system I know of stores addresses, and there is always a case to be made to produce a map of these addresses.
But only when it is not to expensive. This one is FREE.
Google Maps is very powerful so it might return in one of the next demo’s!

As an example of the wide variety of services that are available: WebPurify
This web service checks texts for the use of bad language (swearwords, obscenities)

A simple demo for the use of currency exchange rate
A quick and cheap solution to a traditionally complicated problem.
Very useful if you are not a Bank, but just want to show your customers the approximate price of your products in their local currency etc, etc, etc
Free of charge!

Shopping on Oodle.com
Oodle.com is a shopping web site like craigslist, ebay, marktplaats (NL), mobile (DE)
It scans other websites and compiles the results.
The nice thing is that it has an API. So I made a Classic Car Finder.
It gets listings from Oodle, loads them in Uniface, shows them on Google Maps, converts the price to Euro's also using Google.
And you can click to see the car on the original web site where Oodle found it.

Disclaimer:
These samples are each made in just acouple of hours to show you what is possible.
It is your own responsability to use the ideas from these sample in a production application and to test it!