Control Add-in – Page 4

NAV TechDays 2018 Demos: User Profile Picture

Post published:December 12, 2018
Post comments:5 Comments
Reading time:6 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

Post published:December 12, 2018
Post comments:3 Comments
Reading time:4 mins read

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

Post published:December 12, 2018
Post comments:12 Comments
Reading time:3 mins read

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

Post published:December 11, 2018
Post comments:4 Comments
Reading time:6 mins read

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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Preventing trampling over $

Post published:December 11, 2018
Post comments:8 Comments
Reading time:9 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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