C: Changes in ADF UIX Since JDeveloper 9.0.4

This appendix describes changes to Oracle ADF UIX since JDeveloper 9.0.4. It includes the following sections:

Expression Language Support
Minimal Look And Feel
Partial Page Rendering (PPR) Enhancements
Mobile Enhancements
New UIX Components
Miscellaneous Enhancements
Deprecations
RenderingContext API Changes

EL

Expression Language support has been added for 9.0.5 Data binding using the "data:" syntax is now deprecated. See the Data Binding in ADF UIX chapter for more information.

Minimal Look And Feel

There is now an alternative to the Oracle Browser Look And Feel(BLAF) called Minimal Look And Feel(MLAF). MLAF is designed to render simpler html and use a minimal number of images. For information on how to configure UIX to use the Minimal Look And Feel, see the Configuration for ADF UIX chapter. For information on how to customize the Minimal Look And Feel, please see the Customization of ADF UIX chapter.

Partial Page Rendering (PPR) Enhancements

ClientActions: The client action facility has been added. This allows users to generate events or submits in response to user actions on selected elements (Button, CheckBox, Choice, Link, RadioGroup, RadioSet, SingleSelection, and TextInput).
The HGrid is now PPR enabled. On platforms that support it, the HGrid will update through a partial update if partialTargets are specified. Currently, the update granularity is the entire HGrid.
Partial Page Rendering (PPR) is now on by default. You no longer have to set the Accessibility mode to "inaccessible" in order to enable it. To explicitly turn off PPR, you can set the Configuration.DISABLE_PARTIAL_RENDERING property to Boolean.TRUE. You can do this in the uix-config.xml file by setting <default-configuration> to include <disable-partial-rendering>true</disable-partial-rendering>.

Mobile Enhancements

<sortableHeader> is now supported.
<breadCrumbs> is now supported.
<messageBox> now supports the "message" attribute.

New UIX Components

New in UI Components

<messageLayout> - The messageLayout element behaves like <inlineMessage>, which is now deprecated. This bean lays out a prompt, indexed children, end child, tip, and inline message.
<radioSet> - The radioSet control creates a menu-style control, which allows the user to select a single value from a set of items.
<messageRadioSet> - The messageRadioSet control is a combination of the radioSet and messageLayout controls.
<colorField> - The ColorField control creates a text field for entering colors and a button for picking colors from a palette.
<colorPalette> - The ColorPalette control creates a palette for picking colors.
<colorPicker> - The ColorPicker is used to pick colors from a palette in a secondary window.
<messageColorField> - The messageColorField control is a combination of the colorField and messageLayout controls.
<color> - The color element defines a client validater for specific color formats.
<convert> - The convert bound value defines a binding that will perform a type conversion of its child. The type conversion depends on the value of the 'javaType' attribute, which must either be a full Java class name, or one of: string, char, boolean, byte, short, int, long, float, or double.
<null> - The null bound value defines a binding that will always return null. This is especially useful in templates for explicitly setting an attribute to null (instead of inheriting the attribute).
<truncate> - The truncate element truncates strings when necessary. The number of characters at which truncation begins taking place can be configured with the 'truncateAt' attribute, but strings shorter than 13 characters will never be truncated.
<page> - The page element defines a page. It may be used at the top of an included file to set the binding language.

New in BC4J

<messageRadioSet> - The messageRadioSet element defines an interface to the UIX messageRadioSet component with a simplified data binding to a BC4J data provider. The selection is driven entirely by BC4J; the selection attributes of messageRadioSet itself are ignored.
<radioSet> - The radioSet element defines an interface to the UIX radioSet component with a simplified data binding to a BC4J data provider.

New in the UIX Servlet (Formerly UIX Controller)

<compound> - The compound element provides a declarative way to combine a sequence of event handlers.

Miscellaneous Enhancements

The "UIX Controller" is now known as the "UIX Servlet" in order to indicate that the servlet's role as a page flow engine is de-emphasized in deference to Struts. Other pieces of the ADF UIX servlet will continue to be recommended, as they have no equivalent in Struts: event handling, partial page utilities, etc.
There have been several changes in the BLAF ui specification. These changes have been made to tighten up the page, reduce whitespace and lower bandwidth usage. The most significant changes are to the globalHeader, sideBar, header, messageBox, contentContainer, button, and table control bar.
<body> now has an attribute 'initialFocusId', allowing initial focus to be set on components at page load time. This feature is only available in inaccessible mode.
<formattedText> now has a 'styleUsage' attribute which is intended to make it easier to put the correct style on the text. If "styleUsage" and "styleClass" attributes are both set, the "styleClass" attribute takes precedence.
<column>
- new 'useSeparateRows' attribute, if the children of the column should be rendered on separate rows, then set this attribute to true.
- now has a 'footer' named child, which is the node to render as the column's footer.
<table>
- now has a 'footer' named child, which is the node to render as the table footer.
- now has a 'tableActions' child, which contain the component(s) used for performing table actions that are independent of row selection.
<footer> - now has an 'about' named child, which is usually a link.
<sortableHeader> - has a new 'abbreviation' attribute, which is an abbreviation for the column header's text. This will be read by screen readers when a user is navigating the cells within a table.
<contentContainer> - new "transparent" value for 'background' attribute.
<sideBar> - new 'width' attribute.
<tree> and <hgrid> - nodes marked as EXPANDABLE_ALWAYS by the EXPANDABLE_KEY query cannot be collapsed, and will always be rendered as being expanded
<tree> - the short description of the icon can be set with the ICON_SHORT_DESC_KEY.
<shuttle> - the shuttle now supports a 'disabled' attribute which when set to true disables the lists and move/reorder buttons.
<exampleAttribute> - addition of "contains" as valid value for 'comparison' attribute. Using "contains" is supported for string types only, and uses wildcard semantics but does not require the example value to contain wildcards, so that 'A' will match 'A2', '2A', and '1A1'.
<train>, <tabBar>, and <breadCrumbs> - can now have <rootChild> directly inside them in templates
UIX now contains support for using a cookie to maintain the pieces of a user's profile that affect UIX. The cookie is small and tightly scoped to the originating server only, and contains no information that needs to be encrypted. Please see the Configuration chapter for more information.
Better error logging. We now print the file name, the row number, and the column number when we encounter errors.
A new set of XSS styles has been added which overrides text flipping in bidirectional rendering languages, so that formats like phone numbers are not flipped. These must be explicitly chosen.
Added public javascript method "resetForm(form)" where form is the form to reset. This can either be the name of the form in the current document, the index of the form in the current document or the form itself. This method should be called to reset a form instead of document.form.reset(). Remember to use <importScript name="resetForm()"/> when calling this method.
Added a "reset()" method to the javascript ShuttleProxy, which when called resets the shuttle to its original state.
Added a "setSelectedRow(row)" method to the javascript TableProxy that will select the row where row is the zero-based row number to select.

Deprecations

Deprecated since 9.0.4

The UIX BC4J and UIX Struts tags are now deprecated. They have been replaced by the new ADF Model and Struts support.
"Data:" data binding syntax is now deprecated. Use Expression Language syntax, as described above.
<radioGroup> - the radioGroup element is deprecated, use radioSet instead.
<messageRadioGroup> - the messageRadioGroup element is deprecated, use messageRadioSet instead.
<quickLinks> - the quickLinks element is deprecated.
<contentFooter> - the contentFooter element is deprecated.
<inlineMessage> - the inlineMessage element is deprecated, use the messageLayout element instead.
<table>
- 'height' attribute - was never useful.
- 'name' attribute - use 'id' attribute instead.
- 'columnFooter' named child - use 'footer' named child instead.
<spacer> - using indexed children is deprecated.

Reminder of Earlier Deprecations

<hgrid> - the 'nameTransformed' attribute is deprecated. Use the 'nameTransformed' attribute of the column bean instead.
<sideNav> - use <sideBar> instead.
<pageLayout> - 'contentFooter' named child is deprecated, use the 'pageButtons' and 'returnNavigation' named children instead.
<table>
- the 'tableFilter' named child is deprecated - filtering should appear outside of the table itself.
- the 'text' attribute is deprecated -The title is displayed using a header element.

RenderingContext API Changes

The prototypes for two methods on the RenderingContext interface have changed. Both pushRenderedChild() and popRenderedChild() now take an additional argument: the current RenderingContext. This API change was necessary in order to allow RenderingContextProxy subclasses to query attributes using the correct (current) RenderingContext during the render traversal.

Please note that this API change is not backward compatible, and clients that override or call these methods will be required to change their code to take the new RenderingContext argument into account. Although we normally strive to provide backward compatibility across releases, in this case the lack of access to the current ReneringContext was significantly limiting aspects of the UIX partial page rendering implementation.