Whilst creating a new APEX theme recently I encountered an interesting problem whereby changes I had made to the CSS style sheet were causing the in-built Interactive Report header menus to drop down in the wrong place. The IR drop-down menus were consistently being rendered too far down and to the right of where they were supposed to be. After some investigation I discovered the cause of this problem and came up with a simple fix using jQuery.
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In my last post I wrote about a problem I had using a DOCTYPE in themes running on APEX 3.1.2. I also commented that the underlying cause of the problem had been fixed in the upcoming 3.2 release that was being previewed at apex.oracle.com. When 3.2 was released last week I hastily downloaded it and set about upgrading my 3.1.2 installation. A lot of my current work depends on the included fixes and I was anxious to get back to working on my new themes. Unfortunately I encountered an obscure error during the upgrade that proved hard to track down: “ORA -31110: Action failed as resource /i is locked by name”.  After some digging I finally found the cause of the error and, more importantly, the solution. [more]

When I began creating new APEX themes one of the first things I did was replace all of the table layouts from the supplied templates with standards compliant XHTML and CSS. Naturally this involved declaring an XHTML DOCTYPE at the beginning of each page template. Unfortunately, adding a valid DOCTYPE had the adverse effect of breaking some of the core APEX Javascript relating to dynamic pull down menus and interactive reports. It seems this disappointing scenario has now been resolved with the forthcoming APEX 3.2. Yay!

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An APEX theme consists of HTML templates and CSS and image files. The HTML templates are imported into an APEX application when a theme is imported, but the external theme CSS and image files must be separately copied to the APEX images directory. Even on local APEX installations the APEX images directory must be accessed via the Embedded PL/SQL Gateway (EPG) or a HTTP web server. WebDAV is perfect for this.

WebDav is an extension to the HTTP protocol that allows users to access and manage files on web servers. Web folders are the Microsoft Windows implementation of WebDAV. A web folder is a very easy way to access the APEX images directory. [more]

The use of APEX Hide and Show regions has proven to be very popular within our application. Our users want to have access to a number of sections of information on a single page but they don’t always want to see it all at once. For example, our person summary screen shows information relating to an individual’s addresses, telephone numbers, relations, aliases and other information stored within the system. Users may just want to get some basic information relating to an individual or they may want to view everything at the same time. Instead of having to expand or contract each section individually, one of our development standards dictates that if a page has more than one Hide and Show region then it must also have Show All and Hide All buttons.

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I recently announced the launch of APEX-Themes.com, my new joint business venture with my husband Steve. At APEX-Themes.com you can buy and instantly download high quality stock APEX themes. Our themes feature Interactive Report styling and unique designs very different to the dull themes that ship with APEX.

Following on from the website launch I’m very pleased to annouce that we have now launched the APEX-Themes.com affiliate program. Join our affiliate program and earn generous commission for promoting APEX-Themes.com on your website, blog, forum or anywhere else you like! [more]

After a lot of hard work, pain and a few arguments I’m very glad to announce that my husband, Steve and I have finally launched a new website selling APEX themes called APEX-Themes.com. I’ve never been very inspired by the themes that are provided as standard; these are great for demo’ing but when you spend time and effort developing a fancy APEX application you want it to stand out from the crowd.

Steve is an experienced graphic artist, but he also has a strong technical background having been a games developer then web designer. I’ve now spent over two and a half years focusing on Oracle APEX development, so between us we’ve not only developed some nice looking new themes, but we like to think they come with some unique selling points.

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Sometimes requirements are such that you can’t write a simple SELECT statement to return the information you want to see on a page. For example, you might want a report that displays dates in the first column, names across the top and the task each person is performing on that date as the content of the report. I’ve written a scheduling application that requires a report exactly like this, however, I don’t know the date range or the people that the end user is going to want to see information for.

In another case we have a number of tables that all have the same structure. These are code tables that are used for Select Lists throughout our Forms and APEX applications. These tables all have the same four columns: identifier, code, meaning and an in use flag. There are hundreds of these tables so I don’t want to have to write a separate page to see the data in each of these tables. Not only would this take a considerable amount of time, but I’m likely to go crazy with boredom half way through! Luckily there is an easy solution to both these problems: Dynamic Report Regions. [more]

Using APEX it’s very easy to display information using forms and reports regions, you could even throw in a chart or dial for a bit of something different. However, it’s also simple to generate HTML pages from PL/SQL code. This opens up a world of choice when it comes to designing and developing your application.

This tutorial is a simple demonstration of creating HTML output from PL/SQL code. It assumes that you have completed the APEX_ITEM Tutorial as it relies on the checkbox and ticked column that you create within this tutorial. [more]

OK, so you’ve got a report, but you want something more. You want to add functionality to your report. You want to be able to tick things and have it do stuff. Luckily there’s an easy way and it’s called APEX_ITEM.

This tutorial will talk you through adding a checkbox to your report and adding functionality to your page to identify records that are ticked and processing them.

This tutorial assumes you have a workspace with the Sample Application installed.

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