Scott Spendolini's Blog

Ever since APEX 5, the poor Navigation Bar has taken a back seat to the Navigation Menu. And for good reason, as the Navigation Menu offers a much more intuitive and flexible way to provide site-wide navigation that looks great, is responsive and just plain works. However, the Navigation Bar can and does still serve a purpose. Most application still use it to display the Logout link and perhaps the name of the currently signed on user. Some applications use it to also provide a link to a user's profile or something similar. Another use for the Navigation Bar is to present simple metrics via badges. You've seen the before: the little red numbered icons that hover in the upper-right corner of an iPhone or Mac application, indicating that there's something that needs attention. Whether you consider them annoying or helpful, truth be told, they are a simple, minimalistic way to convey that something needs attention. Fortunately, adding a badge to a Navigation Bar entr

Providing file upload and download capabilities has been native functionality in APEX for a couple major releases now. In 5.0, it's even more streamlined and 100% declarative. In the interest of saving screen real estate, I wanted to represent the download link in an IR with an icon - specifically fa-download. This is a simple task to achieve - edit the column and set the Download Text to this: <i class="fa fa-lg fa-download"></i> The fa-lg will make the icon a bit larger, and is not required. Now, instead of a "download" link, you'll see the icon rendered in each row. Clicking on the icon will download the corresponding file. However, when you hover over the icon, instead of getting the standard text, it displays this: Clearly not optimal, and very uninformative. Let's fix this with a quick Dynamic Action. I placed mine on the global page, as this application has several places where it can download files. You can do the same

It's conference season!  That means time to start looking at flights and hotels and ensuring that while I'm on the road, my wife is not at work (no easy task).  In addition to many of the conferences that I've been presenting at for years, I have a couple of new additions to the list. Here it is: RMOUG - Denver, CO One of the larger conferences, the year usually starts out in Denver for me, where crowds are always large and appreciative.  RMOUG has some of the most dedicated volunteers and puts on a great conference year after year. GAOUG - Atlanta, GA This will be my first time at GAOUG, and I'm excited to help them get their annual conference started.  Lots of familiar faces will be in attendance.  At only $150, if you near the Atlanta drive, it's worth checking out. OCOJ - Williamsburg, VA (submitted) This will (hopefully) also be my first Oracle Conference on the James.  Held in historic Williamsburg, OCOJ is also a steal at just $99. UTOUG - Sa