Developing a Rich UI application

As a Rich UI developer, you do the following tasks:
  1. Create a Rich UI project.
  2. Create a handler and specify the RUIHandler stereotype. The logic is called a “Rich UI handler.”
  3. Add content to the Rich UI handler. The content includes widget details, as well as the following kinds of logic:
    • Startup logic, which runs when the browser first receives the application from an application server; and
    • Event logic, which runs in response to user actions such as a button click.

    Both kinds of logic can access libraries, services, and other Rich UI handlers.

  4. Revise and test your source code.
  5. When you are ready to generate and deploy your code, use the process described in “Introduction to EGL generation and deployment” and “Overview of Rich UI deployment.”
  6. When you store your applications in a corporate repository, keep the specific EGL widget projects that were used during development. This practice ensures that you can update your applications over time without having to make changes to reflect changes in the system widgets.

When you are developing a mobile application, the main widget is a typically a view, which is a container widget of type dojo.mobile.widgets.DojoMobileView. In most cases, a view has a header area across the top, with an optional button for navigating back to the previous view.

If your users are accessing a Rich UI application by way of Microsoft™ Internet Explorer 8 or less, be aware of the issue described in “Rich UI memory management for Microsoft Internet Explorer.”

Outline of widget-upgrade tasks

If you are using the EDT IDE, you can import one or both of the following sets of widget projects when you create a Rich UI project in a workspace:
  • com.ibm.egl.rui_version, for the native EGL widgets.
  • com.ibm.egl.rui.dojo.widgets_version, for the EGL Dojo widgets, and com.ibm.egl.rui.dojo.runtime.local_version, for the Dojo Toolkit project, which is a local installation of the Dojo runtime code.

In each case, version is a revision level of the widget project.

If you want to access widgets that you did not request when you created a Rich UI project, or if you want to upgrade your code to use the latest widget versions, do as follows:
  1. Import the projects of interest. [ insert details, when available ]

    Alternatively, if you are not using the Google or AOL provider projects, you can get all the projects you need by creating a new Rich UI project and then deleting that project.

  2. For each of your Rich UI projects, ensure that the EGL build path points to the new EGL (non-Dojo) widgets and, if appropriate, to the new Dojo runtime code. For keystroke details, see “Editing the EGL build path.”

    In relation to the EGL Dojo widgets, access the Toolkit or provider project that makes available a particular version of the EGL Dojo widgets. Do not change the EGL build path in a Toolkit or provider project, and do not change the build paths in your own projects to refer directly to the EGL Dojo widgets.

Please note that when you upgrade, you need to upgrade both the EGL widgets and the EGL Dojo projects to the most recent versions.