Maximising Sub Regions in Internet Explorer

There have been a few small issues running APEX 5 applications in Internet Explorer since the initial release last year, but most of these have been ironed out in subsequent patches. The issues usually come from Internet Explorer handling CSS in a different way to the other main browsers.

One particular issue I came across that fell into this category was when including a maximise button on a sub region. In the example below we have a number of regions inside each other

When I maximise the report region in chrome, it looks like this:

However, when I do the same thing in internet explorer, this happens:

The region isn’t rendered properly due to the way that IE processes the CSS. I created a support ticket with Oracle and was told that this issue wasn’t feasible to fix due to this being an issue with Internet Explorer and not APEX (despite Internet Explorer being listed as a supported browser for APEX).

This isn’t something I can really say to customers so I had to fix it myself – here’s what you can do if you encounter this error:

• Copy the region template and edit the newly created one. Find the template definition HTML.

• Try removing combinations of #REGION_CSS_CLASSES# and #REGION_ATTRIBUTES# In one application I was able to just remove the CSS classes but in another I also had to remove the attributes.
• This should allow the sub region to be maximised without any issues. The problem you have now is that any settings you have configured that rely on the CSS or attributes won’t be rendered. You will have to manually add any classes or attributes to your region that you are missing.

This should be documented in a future APEX release – the official word from Oracle was “Don’t use the maximise button in sub regions” but if you play around with the region template like I did you might be able to get it working on a case by case basis.

Author: Craig Sykes 

Job Title: Senior Oracle Development Consultant

Bio: Craig is a Senior Development Consultant at DSP-Explorer. Craig has an MSc in Computing Science and is an experienced software engineer, utilising development tools such as PL/SQL and APEX to provide bespoke ERP software to both UK and international businesses. Craig has experience developing solutions to connect Oracle systems to a wide range of existing external applications within business environments.