Five Designers for 4 Platforms
Between Clarion 7 and Clarion.Net we have 5 new Designers, there are Designers for Windows, Reports, WinForms, Compact Forms, and Web Forms. Both the Window and Report Designers are new for Clarion 7. The Report Designer is shared by Clarion 7 and Clarion.Net. In other words both platforms; Win32 and .Net can use and share the same Reports.
Early on we made a design decision to ensure that all the Designers would share the same User Interface, so anyone who learns one Designer will have the same experience with any of the other Designers.
Here is a screen shot of the Window Designer for Clarion 7, and remember that it can also be used to design and modify Windows created for any version of Clarion for Windows.
You'll need to click on each of the thumbnails to see the full sized image.
Let’s have a look at each of the other Designers, and then we can focus in on the common elements of the Designer UI.
Here’s a shot of the Report Designer shared by Clarion 7 and Clarion.Net. Again, take note that the Report Designer can also be used for work on Reports
created for any version of Clarion for Windows.
Now have a look at the WinForm for Designer.
And here is a shot of the ASP.Net Web Form Designer.
The ASP.Net Designer has three possible Views, not the Tab text; HTM and Design. The screen shot above shows the Design view, but you can also work directly with the HTML that the Designer creates for you.
Here is the ASP.Net HTML view
And finally we can also look at an ASP.Net WebForm in Outline view, as shown here
Now we’ll take a look at a few screen shots of the Compact Forms Designer. As you can see the Designer can display the form sized for the target device and with a skinned representation of the device. Just select the desired FormFactor from the dropdown list.
PocketPC 2003
Pocket PC Phone Edition 2003
Pocket PC 2003 Square
Pocket PC Phone Edition 2003 Square
Now that we’ve seen all five Designers let’s review the common UI they all share. The most obvious piece is the Properties Grid which is common to all the Designers, shown here side-by-side
The Designer Toolbars also share almost the exact same UI, the differences are that the Window and Report Designers take a trick from Clarion 6, and can optionally have the most common properties available for editing right on the Properties Toolbar, as shown here in the red boxes.
As you can see, learn them once and you’re ready to use any of the Designers. There are a lot of cool features in the Designers, one of them that I’m sure you’ll really like using is the “Snap Lines” Grid option. It’s impossible to get a screen shot of that feature so here is a very short video. I’ll post a new article and a longer video tomorrow that goes a lot deeper into the new Designers.