Andrew Pollack's Blog
Technology, Family, Entertainment, Politics, and Random Noise| Professional Services | Second Signal | Presentations | Andrew's Blog | Support |
Tabs, tabs, tabs, tabs ....wonderful tabs... -- Will most XPages sites use tabbed navigation?
By Andrew Pollack on 06/18/2008 at 09:59 AM EDTXPages provides a really natural way to create tabbed interfaces for web applications. You drop a tab control onto the XPage, then drop a custom control (remember, that's just another XPage built to be use-case specific) onto the various tabs. My application has four interrelated forms so it makes perfect sense to create a custom control for each as well as a custom control representing the access method for each (e.g. for those with multiple documents, a control which displays them in a view or a fancier "repeat" interface). Dropping these onto a tabbed interface produces a pretty slick AJAX-esque web site very quickly.
Given that most of the demos use this tabbed methodology, and the controls being already there -- and even a fairly good base style sheet and theme -- will all the XPage implementations look alike for a while? Are tabs a solid web UI design choice?
One of my goals today is to understand how well I can meet the common requirement of producing exactly the layout of web page that I've been given as HTML (or sometimes even just as an Illustrator print that I have to use HTML and CSS to create) and not lose any of the power XPages has. That's going to mean a lot of embedding html and css source that didn't come from Domino Designer. 
The code generated by that same tabbed table from the first picture is shown in the second. You can manually modify this and even insert XHTML as needed. The key will be just how much you can do yourself before the page generator can't cope any more. I'll be playing with this, but my guess is Nathan will really be pushing those limits first.
 | Server Performance |
| Are your servers underperforming? Just buying new boxes isn't the answer. If you want to get better performance from your existing servers, Contact Me. | |
Other Recent Stories...
- 09/04/2008If you could pick the topic you wanted from me at LS09, what would it be?Fall is here. Lotusphere 2009registration is open now, as is the call for abstracts. If you could pick my topic, what would you want me to cover? In the past, the Security Jumpstart I do with Gab has been very well attended with a repeat and both sessions really full, so we'll update that with all the new 8.5 stuff and submit that one for sure. Other than that, there's a ton of stuff I'm thinking about. Is there one you've seen me do that you think is worth repeating? Is there a new topic you think I ......
- 09/03/2008Trendspotting: What Google is really starting with ChromeAside from being a fairly cool -- if a bit undercooked -- new browser, Chome has another lesson for us. Google has very specifically NOT created an incremental bloatware version of existing code. They've built something new from nearly the ground up, embedding the proven technologies they needed -- javascript by V8, and rendering by Webkit. Only by starting from scratch were they able to get some of the size, memory management, and security enhancements that form the core of their promising new ......
- 09/03/2008Using the management of their campaigns to learn about the candidatesSome things about these two political campaigns have struck me recently as glimpses of what to expect from an administration led by either candidate. It isn't a perfect picture, but it is telling in a way. It also matches what I think about these two men so clearly my own viewpoint is mixed in richly in the interpretation. To be clear about that bias, I should state here that I am currently planning to vote for Obama, though will not vote an entirely Democratic party ticket. We have some very good ......
- 09/02/2008Chrome - Google's new Web Browser. Super tool, still needs a few things.
- 08/30/2008Notes 8.5 Public Beta 2 - First impressions
- 08/28/2008Have you used the Asus EEE PC? I've got a couple of unusual questions
- 08/28/2008Blogging Respite - A long couple of weeks
- 08/23/2008The disturbing case of the Fridge, and cabinets built by Dr. Seuess. * Updated with pictures
- 08/17/2008From Caitlin: "Dad, are the Olympic medals solid gold?" The answer is interesting...
- 08/12/2008The mis-use of Twitter as a chat room - and what to do about it
