Yearly Archives: 2018

NAV TechDays 2018 Demos: Keyboard Shortcut Listener

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The last of the NAV TechDays 2018 demo series comes with a little story.

While Waldo and I were preparing the “Evolution of the Titan” session, on Sunday before the conference, we were brainstorming the ideas of what would constitute a cool non-visual JavaScript demo. I wanted to showcase the things that JavaScript can do for you in control add-in context, but a less obvious thing. Everyone is expecting to see some cool visual demos, but I wanted to point out the vast possibilities in the non-visual area. Then Waldo asked me: can you make it run an action on a keypress, like post a document on F9?

And that was it! An amazingly cool demo that shows how you can do really cool stuff that falls beyond the visual realm.

Okay, I’ll calm down a bit. Keyboard shortcuts? Seriously? Well, unfortunately, yes. In NAV/BC web client (universal client included) there are almost no keyboard shortcuts. Microsoft is working on some improvements here, but the important thing, allowing developers to bind specific keyboard shortcuts to specific actions, is still conspicuously missing from NAV/BC.

So, I did this demo.

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NAV TechDays 2018 Demos: User Profile Picture

  • Reading time:5 mins read

One of the more effective, and probably completely unexpected, demos at Waldo’s and mine NAV TechDays 2018
session was the user profile picture demo. I say “completely unexpected” is that it shows something that you normally don’t expect from control add-ins. When hearing “control add-in”, most developers (but also most Microsoft people) have in mind a visual control that visualizes some data from NAV/BC and possibly allows you to interact with (C/)AL through that piece of UI. However, there are many other things possible, like having a completely non-visual “controls” that tap into the functionality of the web client and extend its functionality beyond what it was originally designed to do.

One of these is the user profile picture.

If you didn’t attend (or watch) the session, this is what the demo is about: it makes use of the user silhouette icon in the upper-right corner (that actually doesn’t represent anything, just sits there) and allows you to take your selfie and then uses that selfie as your profile picture that’s showing there instead. Pretty neat and cool..

How did I do it?

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Extending the HTML trick: using actual images

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Eric Sevareid famously said that the chief cause of problems is solutions. The same applies to the HTML trick I blogged about yesterday. As soon as you solve the problem of using HTML directly in your control add-ins, another problem arises: what do you do with actual images your control add-in includes?

This post explains how to solve that problem, and how to make it possible for your control add-in to both use HTML for defining UI and use relative control add-in paths to images.

Let’s dig in.

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NAV TechDays 2018 Demos: Customer Star Rating

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I usually post my NAV TechDays demo stuff for you to use and abuse, and this year won’t be an exception. There are three changes, to previous years, specially the last year. First, you won’t need to wait until New Year’s Eve for me to post my stuff. Second, I’ll blog each of the demos individually, because of the third reason. Third, I don’t want to merely dump my code here with a big fat disclaimer; no – I’ll dump it with a big fat disclaimer and some explanations about what the code does and why.

So, here we go, the first demo (actually the second, because I already posted that Muppet Theme): Customer Star Rating control add-in.

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Encapsulation in JavaScript

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This will be my last post in the “JavaScript for (C/)AL Developers” series today. If I continued blogging about nearly pure JavaScript stuff, you could reasonably ask if this is in fact an NAV blog or a JavaScript one. It’s still NAV, and while the stuff I am about to write about is purely a JavaScript concept, I find it highly relevant for any control add-in developer. So, hold my beer, and bear with me for another one.

One of the complaints I often hear about JavaScript is that in JavaScript there is no encapsulation. This is almost completely true, except for the fact that it’s entirely false.

Where is the problem in the first place, and then what is the solution? Let’s dive in.

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Some more thoughts about trampling over $

  • Reading time:1 min read

I am on a spree today. The number of topics I wanted to blog about has accumulated, and I just decided to dump the stuff over here while I both feel the motivation and have time for blogging. However, in this hurry, I forgot to add some important content to my previous post.

First, I forgot to mention that the example of my preserve-jquery script trick can be found in this github repo:

https://github.com/vjekob/controladdin-html

That’s the demo I blogged about earlier today, except this time it has two more branches:

  • Branch “problem”: showcases how a problematic script can break your code.
  • Branch “solution”: showcases how this problem can be fixed by applying the trick from my previous post

Also, there are two JSFiddles I created to follow screenshot-base examples from the post:

I have one more topic to cover today, which has much more to do with JavaScript than control add-ins, but I still find it very relevant. Stay tuned.

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Preventing trampling over $

  • Reading time:7 mins read

In my previous post, I’ve written about the situation when you (or somebody you trust) redeclares the $ variable, thus inadvertently breaking all your jQuery code. I’ve also explained how to remedy for it inside the code you write by applying the Immediately Invoked Function Expression (IIFE) or Self-Executing Anonymous Function pattern.

However, is there anything you can do to prevent anyone from trampling over $ or jQuery variables in the first place?

As I said in my last post, yes, and no.

Let’s take a closer look at it.

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Why doesn’t my jQuery work?

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First, a disclaimer. This post is written for (C/)AL developers who are struggling with JavaScript, who copy and paste JavaScript code from Stack Overflow right into VS Code and are happy when it works, and confused when it doesn’t. Still, if you are not a (C/)AL developer but want to learn a bit of JavaScript yourself, this post is not at al about AL, it’s purely about JavaScript, and about demystifying a piece of it that JavaScript developers take for granted, and that developers with experience only with simpler languages (such as AL) find confusing.

Now let’s jump into the point. A friend asked me for help with a control add-in in which “jQuery doesn’t work, I can do jQuery() but I cannot do $()”

This is one of the schoolbook examples of what happens when you don’t isolate scope in JavaScript, so let’s first see what happened, and then let’s see how you can fix it.

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Abusing Images property to load HTML in control add-ins

  • Reading time:4 mins read

One of major limitations of control add-ins is not being able to define HTML. It seems so unbelievably unbelievable, that anyone looking at it from the outside of the NAV/BC playground may say “obviously, you must be missing something!”. But I am not. The one thing that you would expect to find first when defining a control add-in (and control add-ins in NAV/BC are nothing more than pieces of HTML that live within the allocated area of your browser real estate) is to be able to define the HTML. And yet, you can’t define it. The only way to show any UI from your control add-in is to procedurally create any of your control add-in HTML.

This makes no sense. No. Sense.

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Read more about the article By popular demand: The Muppet Show theme

By popular demand: The Muppet Show theme

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NAV TechDays keeps getting better and better and better every year. So this year, my bro Waldo and I had to prepare a few special surprises in stock for you. And following all the buzz this has generated on Twitter and in the conference app was just amazing, and now we have to think of what can we do the next year to top this one. But let’s keep the next year to the next year, let me do something that a lot of you asked about: The Muppet Show “theme” for Microsoft Dynamics NAV 2018.

In short, this thing:

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