Copyright © TIBCO Software Inc. All Rights Reserved
Copyright © TIBCO Software Inc. All Rights Reserved


Chapter 7 Reference : Panes

Panes
Panes serve as containers for controls or for other panes, and provide a means of controlling the visual layout of objects on a form. Like controls, panes have attributes such as a label, background color, and visibility. Use the child properties of a pane to arrange and display the controls in the pane.
Figure 139 Vertical, Horizontal, Tabbed, and Message Panes
Nesting Panes
Panes can be nested inside other panes for greater flexibility in the positioning of controls. For instance, you can place two vertical panes within a single horizontal pane. This results in a two-column layout of controls for the portion of the form defined by the horizontal (parent) pane.
All types of panes, except for tabbed panes, can be nested to create tabs. Panes can also be rearranged by dragging and dropping within the form Outline view.
It is strongly encouraged to avoid nesting panes to an extreme number of levels, since this complicates the form model and can affect performance.
Nested panes can be used to arrange controls on the form. For instance, you can create a two-column layout by adding a horizontal pane to the canvas, and then nesting two vertical panes within it. The same approach can be used to create additional columns: just place additional vertical panes inside the original horizontal pane.
Types of Panes
There are several types of panes: vertical, horizontal, tabbed, message, grid, and record panes. Each pane type is represented by an icon in the palette.
It can be difficult to distinguish between a vertical pane and a horizontal pane before you place any controls or child panes in them. For this reason, these pane types are distinguished in the Design tab by small chevron icons pointing down for vertical panes and to the right for horizontal panes. (The chevrons do not appear at runtime or in the preview tabs.)
Figure 140 Design View
 
 
Vertical Pane
A vertical pane is a pane in which controls are arranged vertically, with one above the other. Vertical panes are auto-sized to hold controls, child panes, or both.
Horizontal Pane
A horizontal pane is a pane in which controls or child panes are arranged horizontally, with one next to the other. Horizontal panes are auto-sized to hold the controls or child panes within them.
Tabbed Pane
Tabbed panes provide a means of stacking a set of related panes such that one pane at a time is visible. Each pane has a corresponding tab, which are arranged in sequence along one of the tabbed pane’s vertical or horizontal edges.
Keyboard Access Change between tabs without a mouse by using the left and right arrows.
The direct children of a tabbed pane must be panes, not controls. The canvas prevents you from inadvertently placing controls directly inside a tabbed pane. Clicking on or otherwise selecting a tab activates its associated pane (make it visible). This “select-tab-to-activate-pane” behavior is common to both design time and runtime. At design time, however, a tabbed pane offers additional capabilities to aid in the design process:
Add a new child pane   A special button positioned at the end of the tab collection. Click this button to add a new child pane to the tabbed pane.
Expand/collapse the tabbed pane   A special toggle button positioned after the new pane button, that toggles the state of the tabbed pane between a collapsed state and an expanded state. The collapsed state has one pane visible whereas the expanded state has all child panes visible side-by-side. In the expanded state, the tabbed pane behaves similar to a horizontal or vertical pane. You can add, move, and delete controls on the expanded pane. The expanded state is particularly useful when you want to rearrange or delete child panes or move controls between panes.
Message Pane
A message pane is used to display validation error messages. Message panes cannot contain panes or controls. A message pane displays the message typed in the Message field of a control’s Define Validation dialog if the validation script in the Script field returns a value of false.
The following example shows a typical validation script and message for a Text control.
Figure 141 Script and Message Example for a Message Pane
The appearance of a message pane, the label font and layout, can be configured through the Properties view for the pane.
Record Pane
A record pane is used to edit a list of complex objects, one record at a time. It supports the ability to view and edit the contents of one element of an array of complex objects. A set of navigation controls is provided to support moving between the records in the list. The record pane uses the same layout as the vertical pane.
The record pane displays the contents of a list of objects. The contents of the list in a record pane is linked with the list in one of the following ways:
For either of the latter two approaches, the Pane Data Type property needs to be set in the form model to the type of object that is set on the pane with a list.
Figure 142 General Properties Tab of Record Pane
The Properties tab of a record pane’s Properties view displays a set of properties. You can refer to Properties View for Panes section for the complete listing of the Properties tab.
Figure 143 Properties Tab of Record Pane
Navigation Controls
Figure 144 Record Pane with Navigation Controls
 
The controls on the navigation bar perform the following operations:
 
 
The label displays: Record [index] of ##. The index indicates the current record and ## indicates the length of the list. You can directly edit the index value. If a number less than 1 or a number greater than the length of the list is specified, the index is reset to the value it was set earlier.
Grid Pane
Grid panes are generated in a default form for complex data when the data type is defined as allowing multiple instances, for example, zero-to-many (*) or one-to-many (1..*). When a grid pane is rendered, attributes of complex data types correspond to columns, and each of the multiple instances corresponds to a row.
By default, the data displayed in a grid pane is not sorted by columns. Clicking on the column header sorts the rows in ascending order based on the values in that column and clicking again on the column sorts the rows in descending order. Clicking once more on the column shows the values in the original unsorted order.
Several properties appear in the Properties tab of a grid pane’s Properties view that are particular to this type of pane. Refer to Properties View for Panes section for the complete listing of the Properties tab.
Figure 145 Properties Tab of Grid Pane
 
 
Setting Pane Properties with Bindings and Rules
To associate pane properties such as Label, Visibility, and Enabled with the values of controls or parameters, you can use the following:

Copyright © TIBCO Software Inc. All Rights Reserved
Copyright © TIBCO Software Inc. All Rights Reserved