Scott Spendolini's Blog

Apple updated the iPhone to 1.1.1 today. While most of the buzz is around the new iTunes Store, there is a small new feature that makes all the sense in the world: double-tapping the space bar will insert a "." followed by a space. So simple, yet so brilliant. This is a classic example of taking a use case - a user wants to compose a message - watching users actually do that - and then improving upon it. Previous to this release, they would have to type a sentence, and then tap the ".?123" key to then have to type a period, then switch back. Three taps plus one more for the trailing space just for a period. With the 1.1.1 update, all a user needs to do is hit space two times, an a period followed by a trailing space instantly appear. How does this relate to APEX? Simple - once you design an application, you're not done. There are several improvements still to be made, none of which you will be able to identify. Watch your users use your application. You...

Next week, I will be presenting at the Virginia Oracle Users Group conference in Charlottesville, VA. It's a much smaller conference than the ODTUGs & IOUGs of the world, but that makes it better in some sense, as you get a better chance to meet and talk to people. I'm going to present an Intro to APEX (The ABCs of APEX) presentation, in favor or something more advanced, as there are no other APEX presentations on the agenda. If you plan on attending, look for me on Thurday afternoon and possibly at the reception.

First of off, consider my recent absence a summer vacation of sorts, without the vacation part. It's been hectic since my last post, which was about, wow - ODTUG. We had over 100 people in our training sessions there, and most of the feedback was great! We hope to do it again next year, if not sooner. The reason for my absence was largely due to the fact that we recently moved, and pretty much everything that you can think of and then some, went horribly awry. In any case, I was recently asked how to make an entire row in a report "clickable", so that when anywhere in a row is clicked, the user will be taken to a form to edit that record. In order to achieve this, you need to create a new Named Column Report Template. This means that you will have to define each column that you want to have manually in the template itself. Hardly a scalable solution, but it's not too difficult to implement and expand on. I am only going to use one Row Template to keep things s...