Oracle APEX Builder Plugin

Thanks Anthony!

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick Wolf) — Mon, 18 Feb 2008 23:53:00 +0000

Anthony Rayner was so nice to have a look and send me corrections for the documentation of my recently released Oracle APEX Builder Plugin. I also have updated the documentation to make it more clear what the pre-requirements are to be able to open the "APEX Builder Plugin Settings" dialog.

The updated documentation can be found in the new 1.9.1 release. If you already have installed the plugin, you don't have to upgrade. The Plugin itself hasn't changed.

Thanks again Anthony for you help I really appreciate that!

Oracle APEX Builder Plugin v1.9 release!

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick Wolf) — Sun, 17 Feb 2008 22:10:00 +0000

The Oracle APEX Builder Plugin is a productivity and usability enhancement tool for the development environment of Oracle Application Express (APEX).

It integrates with Firefox and Internet Explorer 6 & 7 to put a wealth of new features to your favorite development tool. The good news is, it's Open Source and you can use it for free!

If you haven't heard about it yet, have a look at the newly designed project homepage to read about all the enhancements it adds to the Oracle APEX Builder!

What's New?

Split "Display As" select list for page items.
Quick Pick Links for Report Column "Display As" select list.
Resizable Textareas can now store the size.
Anchor Highlighting has been enhanced to do the highlighting for "Conditions", "Security" and "Build Option", too.
The different features can now be enabled and disabled.
Works with Oracle APEX 3.1: Considers the new item type and the Interactive Report Region. I also had to adapt to a structure change. On two pages the name of a div was changed which broke my code for the ApexLib integration :-(
Thanks to Chris for fixing a problem with Keyboard shortcuts.

A detail list of changes can be found in the Change Log.

What else has changed? The APEX Builder Plugin now has it's own domain builderplugin.oracleapex.info and I totally redid the documentation and the installation process to make it even simpler. I would appreciate it if a native speaker could have a look and send me corrections for grammar and spelling errors. Thanks a lot! BTW, you can now also subscribe to the APEX Builder Plugin RSS Feed.

Have fun with the Plugin!

Oracle APEX Builder Plugin v1.8 release!

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick Wolf) — Mon, 26 Nov 2007 21:03:00 +0000

Oracle APEX Builder Plugin version 1.8 is now available!

Not heard about this plugin yet? It's a Firefox/Internet Explorer extension to enhance the usability/productivity of the Oracle APEX Builder IDE. It adds

So what's new?

Rodney Barnett posted on the OTN Forum a useful suggestion to highlight the "Comment Shortcut" at the top of the page if a comment text has been entered. Most time nothing is entered in the comment, but in the cases someone enters something, nobody will notice. So I thought, until that gets added to the APEX Builder, I'm a little bit quicker than the Oracle guys and here you go! :-) BTW, it automatically filters generated code by wizards.

I also fixed some bugs on some pages (like Link Edit) where the textareas didn't show up probably anymore after installing v1.7.

What else? I finally was also able to fix the nasty "Problems with "Headings Type" in the Report Attributes" bug which was a wired one. Had to move the "Set" select list on the page, because otherwise this strange bug showed up all the time when the user hit the browser "Back" button.

I also added a "Version check" feature, which will check once a week if a newer plugin version is available. It will send the current plugin version, APEX version and your browser name to an update server which returns the link to the "What's new page", if a new version is available. If you want to check the code because of security reasons, have a look at line 1134 (ApexBuilderPlugin.checkNewVersion). Nothing else is sent.

Have fun!

PS: I thought I create this release before the one with the syntax highlighting, because the above bugs where sometimes really show stoppers in my opinion.

Oracle APEX Builder Plugin v1.7 release!

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick Wolf) — Mon, 29 Oct 2007 19:05:00 +0000

Oracle APEX Builder Plugin version 1.7 is now available!

Not heard about this plugin yet? It's a Firefox/Internet Explorer extension to enhance the usability/productivity of the Oracle APEX Builder IDE. It adds

So what's new?

Do you also have a screen which is bigger than 800x600 for your Oracle APEX development? Have you ever noticed that it looks like that the textareas on the Oracle APEX Builder pages where we enter our SQL statements, PL/SQL code,... are designed to fit for this resolution? A lot of space is unused next to the textareas. It would be much better if the textarea would use it so that we can put a little bit more code into a line.

That's exactly what the new version of the plugin does. It adjusts the width of the textareas to use this unused space!

Another new feature is the "Repad sequence numbers" configuration for the "Set" feature of the plugin, which you can use to renumber the sequence numbers of your page items, ... in the bulk edit pages. Thanks again Anthony Rayner for providing the configuration!

Note: With this release I have also upgraded the internally used jQuery library to the newest release. Unfortunately a few features have been removed in the newest version. Please check the "Upgrading the Plugin" section in the HowToInstall file for details. It was also necessary to update the configuration files for the ApexLib integration, please get the new set from the ApexLib download page. And don't forget to clear the browser cache when to have replaced the config files!

Get it now!

Download it from the Oracle APEX Builder Plugin homepage and check the HowToInstall file for all the necessary steps to install it.

What is planned for the next release?

I'm currently playing with the integration of an editor which offers syntax highlighting, auto indent, search/replace, bracket matching, full window editor, ... instead of the boring textareas.

I'm currently looking for beta testers to test and to give input. The following is a screen capture of the integration. So if you are interested, send me a mail. You can find it in my blog profile.

Oracle APEX Builder Plugin available for Internet Explorer

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick Wolf) — Sun, 20 May 2007 11:48:00 +0000

The Oracle APEX Builder Plugin is now also available for Internet Explorer!

For a long time I was looking for a Greasemonkey like add-on for Internet Explorer. I found several of them, like Greasemonkey for IE, Trixie or Turnabout. But the drawback of all of them is that they are not maintained anymore. In most cases development stopped already more than a year ago and the homepages do not mention if they work with Internet Explorer 7 or not.

On Saturday I finally found IE7Pro, which supports IE 6/7. And the good news is that it's actively developed. It has some other features too, but I was just interested in the scripting feature.

After adapting my Greasemonkey APEX Builder Plugin script yesterday, I'm proud to announce Oracle APEX Builder Plugin release 1.6 with support for Internet Explorer and Firefox!

Internet Explorer users can now gain the same productivity enhancements in there Oracle APEX Builder as Firefox users. Like

Download the new version and follow the HowTo Install file for the necessary installation and configuration steps.

Pimp your Oracle APEX Builder

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick Wolf) — Sun, 13 May 2007 21:29:00 +0000

The disadvantage of the new "Web-World" is that most web pages/applications are not really usable with the keyboard. There are no keyboard shortcuts to trigger different actions like saving the changes, ... You always have to use the mouse for that, from a usability point of view that's not good :-(

The Oracle APEX development environment is also written in APEX and runs therefor in the browser. By default there are no keyboard shortcuts to "Apply Changes", "Run the page", ... But here comes the rescue of you productivity and usability! :-)

I thought it's time for a new version of the APEX Builder Plugin, especially because it now has it's own Sourceforge project.

So what's new in this version?

First of all, you have the possibility to define keyboard shortcuts for buttons, links, tabs or items. I have already creates some general keyboard shortcuts, but it's up to you to change them.

F8 to run the page
F10 for "Apply Changes". Note: You have to change the value for other languages!
Ctrl+cursor-left to go to the previous page/page item/column
Ctrl+cursor-right to go to the next page/page item/column
On the report definition pages use Alt+1, Alt+2, Alt+3 to activate the different tabs

See the HowTo Install document for details how to define your own shortcuts.

Another enhancement is also related to the usage of the keyboard. On tabular forms, like the "Bulk update page items" page, you are now able to use cursor up/down to scroll through the rows.

The third enhancement allows you to display a background image or change the background color of your APEX Builder if you are running on a production environment. See the example screenshot I have done based on the provided example in the distribution.

You don't want to have such a background? Just remove it from the config\apex_builder_plugin.js configuration file.

Never used the Oracle APEX Builder Plugin?

Have a look at all the other features.

Download the Plugin and follow the installation and configuration steps in the HowTo Install document!

Change Log of the new version

CR# 1699530: Plugin should also support checkbox fields
CR# 1717258: Change Background color/Image of APEX Builder IDE
CR# 1717896: Allow keyboard shortcuts for buttons and links
CR# 1717798: Add cursor up/down support for tabular forms

Seamless integration of ApexLib into the APEX Builder IDE

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick Wolf) — Sun, 11 Mar 2007 21:48:00 +0000

One of the "drawbacks" of using the ApexLib Framework is, that you have to remember all the "ApexLib Hints" which you have to use to configure the runtime behavior of the framework.

Ok, after some time you are getting used to them, but still, wouldn't it be much more comfortable to set this properties as you do it for the APEX properties?

With the new version of the APEX Builder Plugin you are now able to do that!

On the APEX Builder Pages "Edit Page Item", "Edit Region - Region Definition" and "Report Attributes > Column Attributes" you now have a new section "ApexLib Framework" with the possible properties in that context.

Try it out and download the new version!

Hacking the APEX Builder - Part 3

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick Wolf) — Mon, 19 Feb 2007 10:53:00 +0000

On Wednesday I released the first version of the APEX Builder Plugin, on Thursday I added a small enhancement, but on Friday I had an idea how to really increase the productivity of the Oracle APEX IDE.

People who know me, know that I'm restless and just think about that as long as I haven't implemented it. :-) So I spend some hours of my weekend to enhance my APEX Builder Plugin.

So what excited me that much that I spend another weekend doing some programming?

Based on my UI style guide I always have to change a lot of attributes for my Page Items/Tabular Form Columns/... when I create a new page/item/tabular form.

For Example:

Labels: I don't like the wizard generated label template "... with Help", I want to have them left align and they should have a colon at the end of the label.
Date picker: I have to set "Display As" to the correct format mask, set the Width and the Max Length attribute to some fixed values.
Money: I have to set "Display As" to text, set a format mask, set "HTML Form Element Attributes" to style="text-align:right;", because I want to have to have numeric items right aligned.
Have to remember all the hints which I can use with my ApexLib Framework
...

So many things to remember and so many unproductive steps just to get a consistent user interface. And what about if you have a group of developers, how to help them to enforce the same user interface style guide through the hole application?

That's where the new Set select list comes into the game, which is seamlessly integrated into the Oracle APEX IDE!

Watch the video demonstrating the new "Set" feature.

The select list is fully configurable and can be adapt to your needs. The HowToInstall.html contains instructions how to change the select list. I have also created another video which shows how to use the Firebug add-on to identify the field id's.

So get the APEX Builder Plugin now and increase your productivity!

Hacking the APEX Builder - Part 2

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick Wolf) — Fri, 16 Feb 2007 16:23:00 +0000

Just updated the APEX Builder Plugin for Greasemonkey to version 1.1

Are you also setting "Export Comments" to YES each time when you export your Oracle APEX application, because you don't want to loose your developer comments in the case you have to restore from a previous export. How often have you forgotten and have been lucky that you didn't have to restore?

If you use the ApexLib Framework, the comment is event more important, because it stores meta-data required for the framework and trust me, you don't want to loose this information! :-)

In APEX 3.0 this has already been fixed, the default is now YES.

Until APEX 3.0 is release you can use my APEX Builder Plugin script for Greasemonkey, which will automatically set the "Export Comments" field to YES when you go onto the export page.

Follow the steps in Hacking the APEX Builder - Part 1.
If you have already installed the script, open Tools/Greasemonkey/Manage User Scripts... and uninstall the 1.0 version.
Install the new version 1.1
Verify that Version 1.1 is displayed in the install dialog, otherwise you may have to clear your browser cache.

Hacking the APEX Builder - Part 1

noreply@blogger.com (Patrick Wolf) — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 22:15:00 +0000

Last week I blogged about a resizeable textarea which can be integrated into an APEX application. I thought it would be cool to have this resizeable textareas in the APEX Builder, too.

How could that be done?

I think there are 3 possible solutions

Add the code into the htmldb_get.js with some check that it only executes when the current application is 4000
Implement it as a bookmarklet, but there are maybe size restrictions or
implement it as script for the Firefox Add-on Greasemonkey.

I thought I give Greasemonkey a try, because it's non inversive and it will automatically execute the script as soon as the HTML page has been rendered. So sorry Internet Explorer users! But if you know a similar extension for IE, let me know and I will take a look.

The installation is quite simple, just follow these steps.

Download and install the Greasemonkey add-on.
After the installation you will see a little monkey face at the right bottom.
Download my APEX Builder plugin script
Install apex_builder_plugin.js (File/Open File)
That's all, you are done. Login into APEX and try it out!

I have created a video, demonstrating this new feature. Watch it!