Monday, March 23, 2015

If you haven't done so checkout the Oracle APEX universal theme packaged application on apex.oracle.com.  Here it is from inside a Tesla on a crisp 17" touchscreen.  Yes it does work while driving.




Saturday, March 21, 2015

apex.oracle.com has been upgraded to a pre-production version of Oracle APEX 5.0

If your an Oracle APEX developer you will want to try http://apex.oracle.com.  We have just upgraded this free service to a close (but not yet) production version of Oracle APEX 5.0.  If you already use apex.oracle.com login and validate your applications work as before.  If you don't have an account create one; it should take about a minute.

Oracle APEX 5 has a new feature called "Universal Theme".  A good way to learn universal theme is to install the "Universal Theme" packaged application.  Another good way is install other packaged applications like "P-Track" or "Customer Tracker".  These applications will show off more responsive and more elegant user interface then was available in previous versions of Oracle APEX.  The packaged applications also come with many plugins which can improve your app dev productivity and data visualization.

Give APEX 5 a spin and let us know what you think; we are listening.




Saturday, January 31, 2015

APEX EA3 released

The third and final early access release of Oracle Application Express (APEX) 5.0 is now released on http://apexea.oracle.com.  Our packaged applications now install much faster; I was able to install p-track (all 166 pages) in 22 seconds.  Our packaged apps now all use our new "universal theme", which is also available when creating custom apps.  The developer interface has been modernized and streamlined.  APEX 5.0 supports model dialogs, theme-rollable theme styles, a slick new page designer, and improved interactive reports.

To me the coolest feature of APEX 5.0 is  "template options" which allows for a small number of templates to be styled declaratively.  For example in the past we had way-to-many region templates; now we have many fewer; and you can choose template options to show the header, or not, scroll the body, include padding etc.  Components including regions, buttons, items, and pages all support theme styles; so you don't need to annotate your components within inline styles.   The declarative style support (via template options) is only available when using "universal theme" based apps.  Universal theme styles can be added to a theme allowing an application style to be developed independently from applications.

Getting started is easy; navigate to http://apexea.oracle.com, and request a workspace.  You will receive an email, click the email and this will provision your workspace.  Your workspace provides you access to an Oracle schema.  Authentication is Oracle single-sign-on so its the same credentials you use on the Oracle Technology Network (OTN) forums.  Once you have your account you will want to click the "administrative icon" in the upper right and choose "Manage Users and Groups"; then create an Oracle APEX user.  You can then navigate to the home page and create various packaged apps.  Once a packed app is installed you can login using your APEX user credentials.  You can unlock your packaged app and see how it was created, and see how common design patterns are implemented using our responsive universal theme.

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