About Rich Web Screens using Ajax

Rich Web Screens are Web Screens designed to enhance the user experience using Ajax (stands for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. It is a group of interrelated web development techniques used for creating interactive web applications.) techniques. Comparing with the standard Web Screens, smaller asynchronous requests are transferred to the server during the user's interaction with the Web Screen, always keeping the state of the Web Screen.

An example is when filling a form: the validations of the inputted values are asynchronously requested to the server, allowing the user to continue filling the form without interruptions. As the validation results are being returned they are rendered in the Web Screen near to the correspondent field also without interrupting the user.

In Service Studio, execute the screen actions using Ajax to make asynchronous requests to the server.

Execute Screen Actions Using Ajax

In the Properties pane of the Web widget with Ajax capabilities, set the screen action in the Destination property of the Ajax capability you want it to be executed:

On Click: executes the screen action when the pointing device button is clicked over the widget;

To execute the screen action using Ajax in Button and Link widgets you must set the Method property to Ajax. Otherwise, your screen action will be executed without using the Ajax capabilities.

On Change: executes the screen action when the user changes the information in the widget;
On Notify: executes the screen action when the widget gets a notification sent by a NotifyWidget built-in action. In the screen action flow, use the built-in function NotifyWidgetGetMessage to obtain the message attached to the notification.

On Notify capability is only available for Web Block widgets.

On Notify capability is available in the Properties pane of Web Block widgets instances only if the NotifyWidget built-in action is used in any of the Web Block's screen action flows.

Refresh Parts of the Web Screen Using Ajax

To refresh a specific widget (part) of your web screen while keeping the web screen state use the Ajax Refresh Tool in your action flows. See more about Ajax Refresh Tool.

Refresh List Records and Table Records Widgets Using Ajax

You may refresh List Records and Table Records widgets using Ajax with the built-in actions ListAppend, ListInsert and ListRemove. For that, set the RecordList property of the built-in action with the record list of your widget (<widget>.List).

In the action flow, when built-in action element changes from to means that the Ajax capabilities are enabled.

Now, choose the animation effect for your widget:

None: no animation occurs;
Highlight: the record is highlighted when inserted or before being deleted;
Fade: the record fades in when added and fades out when deleted.

The above built-in actions will only use the Ajax capabilities if they are in a flow of an action that is being executed using Ajax. Otherwise, the result of your built-in will only be visible when the screen is refreshed.