Easy way to replicate widgets
We have been tossing around a concept like "widget macros" where a set of widgets could be given a name and basically then behave as if it were a single unit. Does this sound like it would work?
Could some of you describe in slightly more detail what sort of constructs you would use this for? eg something like a "Customer" widget with a bunch of fields? What settings would you want carried with it? Just the UI-specific settings? The databindings as well?
I was envisioning something simpler than that - let's say you create a simple Input widget and need to set the field type to Decimal, the width to 80px, a default value of 3, not displayed in collection view, formatted as a percentage with digit grouping and two decimal numbers, and possibly conditional styling thrown in for good measure...and then let's say you need that same field to appear 12 times in the same form. That's a drag and drop, at least 15 clicks on 2 properties tabs, and at least two data entries per widget...resulting in over 200 steps required to achieve the outcome. Being able to copy a formatted widget and paste it elsewhere in a form would save about 80% of the end-to-end time in this example. Then we get into being able to copy widgets between collections, which is another discussion unto itself.
Although now that I've finished writing this and have re-read what you wrote, it sounds like we may be talking about similar things. In your "widget macro," are you thinking that if a widget is created within the context of a container 'macro', it inherits the default properties associated with the container? I.e. define a container, set the default properties for widgets created within the context of that container, and each new widget is created with the container's default properties applied? I think that would achieve the same purpose, more or less.
Mike
I have a form with an array of complex widgets that i have to reproduce to describe similar items within one record. alot of calculation, conditional styling, lookups etc go into each widget.
It would really be great to have some way of replicating objects so that it duplicates something that is already made - just appending a unique identifier to the bound datasource name.
you could do this by creating a "duplicate" icon in the side panel that would instantly duplicate anything i dragged onto it. so if i drag one widget on it, a duplicate widget with the same settings but a 'copy' added to the datasourcename is inserted after the widget on the form - and If I drag a columnbox that has a bunch of widgets or nested column boxes and sections within it, it would create a duplicate of those items and put them immediately after the thing i dragged into the form. Then i could just go and rename the datasources and labels, but all the widget and databinding options (ie default data, lookup filter, calculations, etc.) would already be set.
This would tremendously speedup building complex forms with similar repetitive fields.
waddaya think?