Oracle APEX 24.2 General Builder Enhancements

As with all Oracle APEX releases, new features are introduced into APEX to move it forward, but there are also enhancements and improvements to existing functionality to make APEX easier to use and improve the experience. This blog will look at the enhancements to the builder in this release that will hopefully make the UX better for the developer.

Export and Import Pages Across Workspaces

In previous versions of APEX, if a page was exported from one application, it could only be imported into the same application, otherwise, this error would be thrown:

In the latest version, it is now possible to import a page from a different application and/or in a different workspace. Now, you will no longer get the message saying the page cannot be installed, you will see this:

It now allows for the importing and installation of pages regardless of their origin. This is good to allow more granular releases where releasing a page is required through an environment path from DEV to PROD, which might not have been possible in the previous version, where only an application import can be done.

Builder Extensions

In recent versions of APEX Workspace, Administrators have been able to create and edit custom links that are visible on the APEX menu bar. These links could be to websites external to the APEX instance you are working in, i.e., the Oracle Learning website or the APEX Office Hours website, or could be linked to a specific page in an application in the Workspace you are working in, which can use substitution strings.

In APEX 24.2, you can now create subscriptions to these Extension Menus so they can be utilised in other Workspaces. To do this, you need to enable the Allow Hosting Extension attribute in the Workspace Administration Service of the Workspace where the links are so they can be made public and accessed from other Workspaces. Then, they can be subscribed to from other workspaces.

This means your development team can have a set list of Extension links that the developers can utilise directly from the App Builder and can also be used across multiple workspaces. So if one of the links, for example, was a link to the Oracle plugin website, your developers can go directly to that website using the Extension menu from whichever Workspace they are working from.

Simpler List Edit Experience

The way List Entries are edited has been changed to make it simpler and more user-friendly. Instead of the old Interactive Grid format to list the entries on the main List page where some edits could be made directly, there is now just an Interactive Report for the list entries with links to the List Entries page for editing.

Old List Entries report

New List Entries report

There is also now a separate Grid Edit page for bulk editing the List Entries via an Interactive Grid like the previous Interactive Grid on the List page.

Whether this is a simplification of the process of creating and editing lists is a personal preference, but it feels like extra steps have been added to the process to bulk edit list entries with the extra modal page to get to an editable Interactive Grid for list entries, where you could do similar on the main Lists page in previous versions. Aesthetically, the new Interactive Report does look neater, but functionally, does it make the process easier?

Improved Page Designer Context

When using the APEX App Builder in the Page Designer pages, you can now see the app and page you are working on in the window title and breadcrumb for better context and navigation.

Old window title and breadcrumb                 

New window title and breadcrumb

Now it is easier to work out where you are within the application you are developing by using this enhancement by looking at the window title or breadcrumb, especially when the left-hand frame is in the Dynamic Action tab or the Processes tab, as in previous versions the only way to see which page you were on was looking at the page LOV or by having the Page Rendering tab in the left-hand frame. Also, if you were working in the runtime of the app or a different tab in the Web Browser, then you can easily identify which tab goes back to the APEX App Builder without flicking through different tabs.

Resizable Modal Dialogs

A new page attribute to Modal Dialog pages has been introduced to allow you to declaratively set whether the resizing of the modal dialog can be performed by end users.

This enables a more flexible UI to allow the end user to resize the modal window, as there are sometimes challenges in getting modals with a lot of items formatted to fit all screen sizes. And with the limitation of having to set a fixed modal dialog size or allowing it to stretch to fit the window, this can cause an excess of whitespace or restrictive layouts to fit a lot of items into a modal dialog.

Allowing the user to resize the modal dialog window means the developer does not have to have as much emphasis on catering for different screen sizes and focuses more on making sure the modal is designed for most and the users are able to resize if it needs to be for their screen size.

Summary

Hopefully, with his selection of enhancements, you can use them to make developing a little bit easier and to give a better experience to the developer and end-user in the last instance. As well as introducing new features which make APEX keep pace with the ever-changing demand for app development and design it is great to see that the APEX development team are still looking to make the tool better for developers, whether that be an experienced developer or a new low-code developer.

As with everything some things will be used more than others and some enhancements will help more than others and in this tranche of enhancements there are some that are a couple that are more cosmetic in nature but there are some that can be very useful, like the resizable modal dialogs and then exporting and importing of pages between different applications and workspaces.

All in all, it still feels like, with these enhancements as well as the new features, APEX is an up-to-date, cutting-edge tool for enterprise application development.

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