Relationship mainPanel and panels and mainFrame

Hı Raymond,

Formspider does not use the page paradigm. You build apps like you would build a desktop application, with Windows, Dialogs and Panels (canvases if you are familiar with Oracle Forms jargon).

Formspider has three types of Containers: mainFrame and Dialog (under the general grouping of Windows) and Panel.

A Formspider application has 0 or 1 mainFrame. This is the main Window of your application. You almost always have 1 mainFrame and you almost always maximise it and hide its titlebar. A mainframe is the top visual container of your application.

A Dialog is a Window but unlike mainFrame, you can have many Dialogs in your application. You can open multiple Dialogs at the same time.

A Panel is a container that can reside in any other Container (windows and panels). It covers a certain part of the content area of the Container it is in. There is a recursive relationship between Panel containers. A Panel may contain an unlimited number of panels. A panel can only be included to one Panel.

During run-time you use Formspider API's to add/remove Panels to/from Containers.

During design time, you can put Panels, inside Windows and you can put Panels and Components(testFields,textLabels etc...) inside Panels.

During run time you can add/remove Panels to/from Containers and show/hide Windows.

There are bunch of examples in the Demos section and the Learning Center to show you how to do these operations.

Hope this helps,
Yalim