RIA - Main Menu

Where is the actual command e.g. URL to open a form in the workspace, put? Is there an example of it in the book?

Why would you do a menu this way? Menus don’t really change for an application, so why not just hard-wire them? I would have thought this would be faster to load and easier to maintain?

Great book by the way! I don’t profess to understand it all but as it has now become my Bible, I am hoping that will change as I use it more.

Hi Eric,

You can download the code from this website. It includes each of the five steps discussed in the RIA chapters.

In baf/step5/obe/Navigator.js, the initializer for obe.Navigator connects the tree widgit event “focusNode” to a function that publishes the topic “focusNavNode”, passing interesting node information with the topic (line 25). Then, in baf/step5/obe/WorkspaceManager.js, the initializer for obe.WorkspaceManager subscribes obe.WorkspaceManager._showObject to the topic “focusNavNode” (line 15). This has the net effect of calling obe.WorkspaceManager._showObject whenever a tree node receives the focus. _showObject is the function that actually loads and initializes the form; publish-subscribe is discussed in Section 6.3.

Note that some of this example isn’t quite industrial strength. For example, there is no data binding. But the example would quickly become another book if the entire “real” framework was discussed. If your interested in a/the real framework, watch www.vista-info-tech.com where we will be publishing the real framework from which the RIA chapters was derived (open source, BSD license).

Sometimes menus do change for an application. In particular, a menu may change depending upon the permissions of the current user or the task. For example, consider the BAF framework that displays these workspace objects (WSOs). One WSO might be a form connected to data while another might be a form design connected to metadata. In the first case, menu items would talk about running the form (e.g., adding/editing/deleting data); in the second case menu items would talk about designing the form (e.g., aligning/sizing/formatting controls).

Also, once the investment is made in a generalized command menu framework, then constructing a menu for a particular application largely becomes a data issue rather than a code issue, hopefully simplifying the program construction process.

Thanks for the compliment. Tell everybody you know!!

Best, Rawld rgill [at] vista-info-tech.com

Hello Rawld,

First off, I wanted say thank you for writing an excellent book. Though this book I have been able to quickly pick-up the required Dojo skills to develop RIA. My question for you is if have any indication when www.vista-info-tech.com will be publishing their RIA framework. I am very interested with what you have done in the RIA chapter and am looking forward to investigating your framework. I’ve been watching your site for the past couple of weeks but have yet to see any changes.

Thanks, keep up the good work! Tanner

Hi Tanner,

Thanks! Check out http://www.altoviso.com and http://bdframework.org for update to all of this. Also, see http://forums.pragprog.com/forums/58/topics/8767 and http://forums.pragprog.com/forums/58/topics/8226 for more info about BAF.

Thanks, Rawld