Section Expanders in LightSwitch HTML

Section Expanders in LightSwitch HTML

Overview

Apps created with LightSwitch HTML client are mobile first as the UI is based on jQuery Mobile. This post introduces a way to organise form data with section expanders that are often found in desktop app scenarios.

Default Mobile First Style

In the mobile style of pages the data is typical displayed in one or two columns and related data is visualized in tab sections. Here is an example of a default View screen with details on the first tab and related information located on separate tabs.

Tab Sections in LightSwitch HTML

In many ways the styling is a matter of taste and there are several ways of presenting larger volumes of information in common use. Using the in-built View Details Screen template the screen content layout looks like this:

View Details Screen Layout

The screen content is organized into parent tabs and the tab layout uses the Columns and Rows Layout controls.

Designing the Layout and Behaviour

In desktop application scenarios the answer to how to display large amounts of data fields has often been to use section expanders. Very often for line-of-business apps a combination of tabs, expanders and pop-ups is used to try and provide an optimal user experience.

If you want to give your LightSwitch apps a more Desktop UX feel there is nothing stopping you from implementing similar styles and behaviours.

The first step is to organise the screen content layout into sections. Each section will have a visible border box to group related information. The first header section in this example will be static. Subsequent sections will be expandable and will be displayed by default as collapsed.

Screen Content Layout for Expanders

The sections are marked up: Header, Attributes and Tracking

The expandable sections contain a custom control for the expander header and the rest of the section content is (Not Visible) to start. Let us take the first example above, with the layout hierarchy:

Expander Content Items Layout

The section’s top Rows Layout will:

• Handle _tap event to toggle the section details visibility

The section’s Custom Control will:

• Render the expander header

The section details Rows Layout will:

• Block _tap events from bubbling up to its parents
• Display the section border box in _postRender

Implementing the Expander

Firstly we will attend to the rendering of the expander header:

Render Expander Header Custom Control

I have set all the CSS attributes in the _render code here for directness. You should really use a custom CSS class. You can experiment with the CSS attributes for different visual impact. The sample variable _attributeExpanderHeader should be scoped to the screen. You could include icons as part of the visual feedback.

Then complete the visual changes by adding code to the section details group content item like this:

Expander Section Details

The CSS styles place a border box around the sections details. The Tap action is bound to showTab Details – this stops the tap event bubbling up.

Then finally on to the section’s top level group control to handle the tap event to expand and collapse the section details.

Toggle the Expander Section Visibility

The toggle event flips the isVisible setting and handles the rendering of the bottom border of the expander hander. You could experiment with icons here.

Conclusion

With a little screen content layout design work, some CSS styles and a toggle event you can introduce section expanders to you control portfolio in LightSwitch TML client apps.

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Tab Header Styling in LightSwitch HTML Apps

Tabs Style in LightSwitch HTML App

Overview

The default appearance of the tab headers in your Cloud Business Apps and LightSwitch HTML Apps can be customized to make them look more appealing and looking a lot more obvious to the end-users.

This post shows you which CSS classes and attributes to change to achieve tab headers that look like retro card index tabs.

Examples and Samples

This is the style of tab headers that we will show to create.

Rounded Corner Tabs Styling

Some simply rounding of a corner can give a card index file type appearance.

Card Index File Style Tabs

The CSS styling customizations required can be made in one place that is then picked up by all screens and pop-up dialogs. Here is a similar styling in another app but with a more rounding to blend in with the apps style.

Round Tab Headers in a Pop-up Dialog

You can see the visual impact readily. Clearly you can use any HTML5 CSS styling that you like once you have access to the classes and elements. The simplest way to do this is to override some of the CSS styling by editing the ‘user-customization.css‘ file located in the HTML Client ‘Content‘ folder.

user-customization.css in solution explorer

At the top of this file you can add a section to change the styling of your project’s tab headers. Here is the first example:

msls-screen-tab css class

The CSS classes involved are:

• msls-screen-tab
• msls-screen-tab-active
• ui-btn-inner

In this case the border-top-right-radius is setting the rounding effect. The CSS attributes needed will vary based on the complexity of your apps style sheets. In this example the existing style sheets have no border rounding.

In the second sample, where the app’s border styling is already rounded, a few more attributes need to be overridden for the full effect.

msls-screen-tab complete border rounding

In this case the border top left radius continues to be inherited from the main style sheet and so matches the apps other visual elements, such as buttons. The top right border is given more rounding to extenuate the visual effect of a card index header. To finish the look, the apps default rounded styling is overridden in the bottom border corners.

You can experiment with other attributes from font properties to background effects.

Conclusion

A simple way to add a bit of card index style to your tab headers. Not all Cloud Business Apps and LightSwitch HTML Apps need to look the same.

Hello, Colors and more

MSDN Magazine > Issues and Downloads > 2013 > May 2013 Issue

Leading LightSwitch – Hello, Colors

Jan Van der Haegen

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If you have not taken the time to read through and try the above sample written by Jan in his MSDN Magazine column then you should do so. As Jan says, if you are new to VisualStudio LightSwitch then visit the LightSwitch development center. LightSwitch has shallow learning curve, so you should be following through the ‘Hello, Colors’ article in no time.

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For some reason MSDN Magazine web site refuses to let me post feedback so I decided to publish this blog post. Well done Jan, great article!

Following on, here are my attempts to implement colour-coding inside a sample LightSwitch HTML Client:

Picture 1: Sample form with colour picker

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Picture 2: Sample popup dialog with colour picker

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Picture 3: Colour-coded tiles

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I think that is not too bad at all, however it was not all straightforward. I arrived at this point expecting success provided there were no typo’s:

Picture 4: Colour picker style at odds with the theme

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So that did not work as expected. The input textbox gets focus and nothing shows. Jan’s examples usually work so I figured I must be missing some tweaks to the UI elements. Firstly, lets style the input textbox to match my JQuery Mobile ThemeRoller theme:

Picture 6: HTML element does not expand

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To fix the problem I had to adjust the minimum width and height settings in the LightSwitch designer for the colorpicker custom control. I wonder if Jan did that or is there a problem with changes with the latest release of the software?

Picture 7: Setting minimum width and height

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For those wishing to alter the style of the input textbox, here is the JavaScript code:

myapp.AddEditProduct.Color_render = function (element, contentItem) { setTimeout(function () { var colorPicker = $("<input class="id-element ui-input-text ui-body-a ui-corner-all ui-shadow-inset ui-mini"" + " id="cpFocus" type="text" maxlength="255"" + " value="" + contentItem.value + "" data-mini="true" />"); colorPicker.appendTo($(element)); colorPicker.colorpicker({ showOn: 'focus' }) .on('change.color', function (evt, color) { contentItem.value = color; }); contentItem.dataBind("value", function () { colorPicker.colorpicker("val", contentItem.value); }); }, 0); };

Code 1: The class tag for picking up the JQuery mobile styling

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That is all for now! Many thanks to Jan Van der Haegen and the Visual Studio LightSwitch team.

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Theme rolled courtesy of and at JQuery Mobile ThemeRoller – get rolling!

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