Method Community

I am trying to add a new section to a screen design and I am having problems in FireFox and IE.

I am able to add a new section to a custom screen design, in this case I am adding a new section to the Customer List Screen.

The new section is inserted at the bottom of the sections, in the case of the Custom List screen as copied from Full Method it would be the 7th section.

But, I am unable to move the section up in the list of sections.  For example I would like the new section, "ShipInfo" to appear just under the "Address Info" section, presumably this should make the "ShipInfo" tab, the second tab on when presented on the screen.

I can get the section to move up, but as soon as the screen refreshes, which occurs automaticaly and cannot be avoided, the section snaps back to the bottom.  I think if I could get to the publish button prior to the screen refresh, the change might stick as I assume there is a form posting bug, grabbing an old or cached value on refresh before the design change is published.

I've tried this in both Firefox and IE with the same result, dozens of times.

There are few locations where the pixel width of header lables are not the same as the grid contents in the screen design window, if the widths of the grid and contents aren't correct it could cause float issues in the code generated html/css.  There used to be bugs in the browsers that would jog contents 1 px, but with modern browsers you should be okay if you are at least pixel perfect, if not at least 1 px short of the container width.

Cheers,

James

James -

I'll let the rest of the Method team add to this tomorrow - but since it is late at night, and I want to give you a shot at an answer, let me share what I know on this topic.

I believe there is still a known outstanding bug with our designer screen where if you move a section up or down *that has no objects in it* it gets really bored with you and flat out ignores your request.  So first thing to check is that there is something in the section before you move it.

By any chance - was that the issue?

Paul 

Oh, great idea, the container was definitely empty.

I'll give it a try and report back.  I should have thought of this.  It's not uncommon to see object code that likes some data in the bucket.

Cheers,

James

Yes, that worked like a charm.  I added one field to the section then moved it up 4 rows.

It took a few tries though and there is still some funky stuff going on with the screen refresh.  There's a refresh that follows the dialog box asking for confirmation to refresh and then occasionally another refresh follows and resets the section moves if the section has moved more than once.

Just guessing, that the dialog box refresh might be causing more problems if the server code also has some automatic refresh code.

Also, might be a quick fix for the Insert Section function to populate the new section with the first field it encounters in the field list.  Some might call that a hack, others might call it a workaround or fault tolerant coding.  It used to be impossible to get a web page to work correctly if it was coded to standards and elegant hacks were just good practice.

Thanks again for the tip.

James

Thanks James - glad to hear it worked.

Sounds like you know a bit of coding, and can feel some of our pain :).

Paul 

Yes, the toolkits, libraries, and all the other technology layers that make for rapid development also introduce complexity and occasionally unpredictable behaviour.  But, what would software cost if it was all written from scratch in C? A certain allowance for behaviour that is out of the direct control of the developer is necessary for quick, inexpensive, feature rich software deployed in a browser (or better said, deployed as hardware and OS agnostic.)

The quality of the technical support on the forum is really fantastic, by the time the number of users becomes overwhelming, I'm sure most of the critical issues will have been worked out.

Go Method!