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January 9, 2008
Page Layout with Group Boxes
I've previously mentioned some of the challenges involved in complex page
design. If you're not careful, some PeopleSoft pages can tend to go out
of alignment and turn into random jumbles. This generally happens when the
page includes many elements positioned closely together, but it can also
happen in other cases. There is always a reason, although sometimes it can
be difficult to determine what it is! In these cases, group boxes can become
very useful.
Suppose that you have several elements
that logically go together, but they seem to be affecting the alignment of
other unrelated elements. Surrounding these with a group box will
generally fix the problem.
A group box resolves to an HTML table. By default, it includes a border, a title bar, and a shaded background.
That's fine if you want to indicate a grouping visually to the user. But if
you are using the group box just to force alignment on the page, it would be
better to make it invisible. To do that, go to the properties of the
group box and make a few changes. There is no "None" option for the title, but
you can set the title to blank. On the Label tab, in the Display Options section,
check "Hide Border" and set the Body Style to "PSTEXT." Now the box is invisible.
If you click somewhere within the enclosed area, a dashed border will appear
so that you can see where the box is.
Use group boxes to create a column-oriented page layout where each column contains
elements that can change sizes—a grid, for example. The group boxes help
to separate the two columns so that they don't affect each other.
You can also use group boxes to remove entire sections of the page. For example,
if you have a page containing information that should be invisible to certain
users, surround the information with a group box and give it a record and field
name (on the Record properties tab). On the Use tab, check "Hide All Fields
when Group Box Hidden." Then, in PeopleCode, set the Visible property
of this Record/Field to true or false as appropriate.
Until next time...
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