Commands and Navigation in BrightWeb

User Login Main Page

After entering the BrightWeb URL (http://<BrightServer IP Address>:<BrightServer Port>/brightserver/web/) , the following login page will be displayed to users:

Entering valid user credentials in at this stage and clicking 'OK' (or hitting the Enter key) may have three different effects:

• If the user does not have a valid application assigned, a simple diagnostics page will display.

• If the user is not web enabled, but does have a valid application, a diagnostics page with 'Not Authorised' will display.

• If the application is valid and the user is web enabled, the application will load for the user to use.

If incorrect user details are entered at this stage, the page will be updated displaying the following to the user

Web Toolbar

All forms are able to close, log out, go 'home' or show the about or help pages via a web toolbar that appears at the bottom of the screen. This may display up to 5 options to the user, as well as the username of the user who has logged in.

The options to the user is as follows:

• Close - Closes the current form, and returns to the previously opened form. If it is the last form open, the close button will log out the current user on confirmation.

• Home - Switches the user to the very first screen of the application. No forms are closed in this process. If the current form must be closed in an orderly fashion, then this option can be hidden to prevent the application from running an incorrect business logic.

• About - Displays the about form defined by the project's properties, otherwise will open a new window displaying the BrightServer version.

• Help - Displays the help string for the form in a new form. This option in toolbar will only appear if the help string property of the form is populated.

• Log out - Confirms if the user wishes to log out of the application and end their session. For more information, see the Logout Confirmation section below. Similarly if the current form must be closed in an orderly fashion, then this option can be hidden to prevent the application from running an incorrect business logic

The appearance of these options may be modified in a form's properties in your BrightBuilder project, depending on the logical flow within the web based application. The web toolbar is displayed in addition to the screen space (i.e. the height of the form) defined in the application. This means if the toolbar needs to be visible on the screen without the user needs to scroll down, then the height of the toolbar must be taken into account when the forms are designed.

Logout Dialog

Tapping on the logout button will display a log out dialog to the user. If the user agrees to this confirmation, the application will return to the server login screen, and their session, as well as their application state, will be treated as completely logged out, the user session on the server will be removed and allocated system resources will be released.

While this course of events is similar to typical web applications, it is different from the typical flow of existing BrightXpress mobility platform solutions. Rich client BrightForms applications on Windows and Android platforms are in simple terms model dialog applications. This means that while the application is executed, BrightForms maintains a stack of forms on top of each other, and prevents the user from accessing other forms, allowing access only to the top most form currently active.  BrightWeb maintains and services forms in a different way. That is why if a certain execution order of opening and closing forms are to be maintained, then having the logout and home options on the toolbar may not be suitable on certain forms in a web application. For compatibility with existing Windows Mobile and Android applications, disabling the logout and home options on the web toolbar on some forms may need to occur for a consistent and unified solution.

Message Boxes in Web

Message boxes are given their own browser space separate to the form they have been called from to accommodate variable messages and options on the web platform. Once an option has been selected, the user is returned to the parent form which holds the result.

While consistent with BrightForms implementations on Window and Android, this may be disruptive to the user, and also may pose problems for the state of the application due to the screen shift. Thus in applications running on BrightWeb, the effect on State Management and Form Loading should be carefully considered before utilising message boxes.

Menus in Web

There are two types of menus available in BrightWeb, set by the 'Web Menu Position' in the Project's properties. Having the position set as 'Top' will have menus behaving similarly to PDA applications, displaying at the top of the screen when running in web mode. Menu expansion will occur when the menu item's region is hovered over. On touch screen devices, this region needs to be tapped to expand. The menu items are accessed by tapping/clicking the listed text entries. This is the default menu style for all new projects in BrightBuilder.

As of BrightBuilder 7.2.0, menus may also be defined as 'Left' positioned in web. This may be used within the application to give a more web-like look and feel in terms of navigation, displaying menu options on the left hand side of the screen for forms which have menus enabled. These items may be clicked as links for the menu action to occur.

There are a number of web-only properties which also apply solely to this menu representation - Web Menu Has Image/Image File, and Web Menu Width. This will define the image displayed at the top of the left-positioned menu in web mode, and the width of the menu displayed in the application.

Both these types of menus' font, text colour and background colour may be changed for web via a project's 'Web Menu Font' property. The space used by each of these menus is in addition to the space in the WYSIWYG. As a result, when defining a screen aspect with menus, this menu section's height/width and the form dimensions should also be factored in when calculating the total screen space of the application.

These side menus may be used to facilitate centralised navigation in projects where all forms may load from any other opened form via menus. In such projects, in order to avoid a large unused stack of forms, please refer to the 'Web - Close Current Form Before Opening Child Form' feature in the Form Open Dialog.

Cursor Forms

Cursor forms with cursor and/or navigation bars will display them with all available options above the web toolbar at the bottom of the form. The links correspond to the following actions:

• New - Create a new record

• Save - Saves any changes made to the current record

• Del - Delete the current record

• << - Navigate to the first record in the query

• < - Go to the previous record in the query

• > - Go to the next record in the query

• >> - Navigate to the last record in the query

The space for this feature is separate from the defined height of the form, and should be managed as such.