IT Mill Toolkit Forum

Marc Englund wrote:

I can see how this would be useful; I'd probably subclass Panel, though - so that the basic panel is kept simple.

A alternative implementation that would be more restrictive, but potentially cause less problems (imagine adding a Table to the Panel header...), would be to make Panel (or a subclass) implement the Action.Container interface - adding an action to the panel would then add a button/icon to the header.

Just "thinking out loud" ;-)

//Marc

I agree with you Marc, you would have to create an interface like "Captionable" to the components that would be able to be added in the Panel Caption, and keep the Table out of it.

just kiding.

JoaoGalli wrote:

I agree with you Marc, you would have to create an interface like "Captionable" to the components that would be able to be added in the Panel Caption, and keep the Table out of it. just kiding.

Yeah, that would work...

Firstly, I am a new user to the framework (a convert from Echo for the same reasons that some others have mentioned) so I must apologize in advance if anything I say is incorrect about the framework.

I started with GWT but found the abstraction level of that framework too low. I can see straight away that this framework has a higher abstraction level then even Echo, which is going to have some good and bad points.

Unfortunately, the current list of components is a bit slim. However I have the feeling that the decision to base the framework on GWT may make that a short-term issue only. However, what is concerning me is that the lack of certain components is restricting the creation of web-2.0 style applications and forcing the layout to be rather web-1.0 style.

First off the bat, and why I posted on this thread, is a 'close' button on the tabs. This allows for applications to use an application layout design similar to Azureus with tabs being created for new screens rather than many pop-ups or a pre-web-2.0 style of replacing the main view and using bookmarks to track nested depth. For certain styles of application this is perfect and it is surely a small change?

Another component that enables better layouts is the 'Outlook Bar'. Using a tree-view as is done in the demo is not a good alternative for various reasons (no images!). As it turns out this component can probably be built up quite simply if the panel class supports a 'collapsable' action, but for this component the collapsing isn't generally done via a toolbar - normally clicking on the header will trigger a slide-open.

A third crucial component that allows web-2.0 style layouts is a 'top menu' component. For very large applications placing (at least some) options into a menu is a perfect way to simplify application design. Although a simple top menu is adequate, if you wanted to get a little bit fancy, a toolbar component that can take buttons with drop-down menus like is found in GWT-Ext gives you the same benefit in layout options with a component that is a lot more flexible and visually pleasing.

I think even if you aim to include more complex choices like the fancy toolbar, it doesn't invalidate the need for the simpler top-menu style widget. I am often stuck maintaining applications for a long time and in some cases, the deliberate choice to use a simple component that is more likely to withstand the various browser upgrades over the years of the application can be a life-saver. For example, one application that is crucial to my current employer that I wrote in Echo1 with Echopoint shortly after their release is still running today - with all the Echopoint components removed. As it turned out, over time, the QA and maintenance effort was less for the Echopoint components than in those included in the project core and it suffered poor robustness over the many browser upgrades since then. The same issues are likely to be found with 3rd party components with the IT Mill framework and perhaps with the more complex components core components also. It would be nice to be able to build apps with a config setting which causes it to use the simpler more reliable component if required.

So really this post is really a bit of an appeal to focus on some simple components which help with web-2.0 style layouts.

Oh, and thanks for a great framework and I hope to see this grow into a great success for you guys!

Regards

Welcome llaith, good to have you as our user!

Thanks for the detailed post, we really appreciate the input from our actual users. This is the kind of knowledge we need to make our products match the needs from the real world.

At least from what I know, almost all the improvement ideas you mentioned above have crossed our minds several times, but somehow none of us currently working on Toolkit have had the time to implement these features yet.

I suppose it's because we have consentrated on making the underlying framework more robust before we jump to implementing new components. But rest assured, these components/enhancements are coming, we're just getting started.

To speed things up, you could try to promote these ideas in our ticket system at http://dev.itmill.com by creating new tickets for each request.

Thanks again, hope to see you more on the forum,
-Jouni

Thanks Jouni,

Here are the tickets

http://dev.itmill.com/ticket/1595 (sorry for the bmp)
http://dev.itmill.com/ticket/1598
http://dev.itmill.com/ticket/1596

Regards

yes, a vote for tablemodel

Anonymous wrote:

yes, a vote for tablemodel

You have read about Table.setContainerDatasource(), haven't you?

yes, i have now

thanks for pointing that out.

however what i mean is something very simple like:
http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.4.2/docs/api/javax/swing/table/TableModel.html

Guys,

I am reading the book "GWT Applications" from Ryan Dewsbury and I saw some good examples that I think ITMill should implement in the Panels section.

There are a lot of panels GWT implements, like: DeckPanel, DockPanel, ScrollPanel.