while working on a product feature i'm currently designing, it occurred to me how useful object-oriented relations for widgets (both stock and custom) would be.

for ex: if i'm using a data grid widget in a large project, say across 50 pages and i decide to change the style or contents of it, all instances where this data grid widget is in use should also be updated dynamically (with an option to ignore this as a preference). with such an option, this would save me from having to go through each of the 50 pages to apply a uniform change.

similarly, if i group elements together to create an ad-hoc widget (for ex: combining standard and custom widget elements together to create something new), it would be nice to name this "new" element and have any changes made to it be applied to all pages that contain it.

several multimedia authoring tools this kind of object-oriented approach and it makes life nice for medium to large projects.

thoughts?

 

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Disclaimer: I am not an employee of Axure nor am I compensated by the company in any way, shape or form. Rather, I have a vested interest in its continued development as an avid user of the application on a daily-basis.

And this is where methods would start to come in handy. If you can define an object that has certain attributes, and then define a method that does something to or with an object of that class, you could conceivably cut down the amount of copying actions from one widget to the next. Thinking of masters (at least the "normal" ones) as objects seems pretty natural. You could even get inheritance by embedding one master inside another.

It gets even better if you could define a collection of objects on which to act. For instance, OnClick, select every checkbox in this collection. Or move every panel in this collection by 30 pixels. Or compare the value of field X in every object in this collection to a user input and highlight the ones that match.

How feasible this would be I haven't a clue, but it would be pretty cool.

Hi Ari,

I think I may not be at full speed this morning. With the datagrid example, how would this be different than if the grid was created as a master? Or is it a master with options to override properties and data on each instance of the master?

Victor,

I know Masters can do this but custom widgets currently don't have Master-like properties. Long ago, I created a large library of custom widgets for my company's product(s) as Masters but moved them to custom widgets as this was more flexible for many purposes.

So, in effect, this capability would be needed for custom widgets as well as "ad-hoc" or custom widgets that are created using other elements.

For ex: I create a new interface element that incorporates existing elements.

Does that make sense?

Thanks

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Disclaimer: I am not an employee of Axure nor am I compensated by the company in any way, shape or form. Rather, I have a vested interest in its continued development as an avid user of the application on a daily-basis.

Hi Ari, I think so. It's sounds like you would then want a change to a widget in the custom library to give an option to apply that changes to the places where you used that widget. Kind of like making widgets in the library work like masters. For the ad-hoc widgets not created as a master or a widget in the library, there would be some recognition of when it's copied and pasted and similarly give an option to update all "clones" when an edit is made.

Victor,

Exactly.

 Thanks,

Ari

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Disclaimer: I am not an employee of Axure nor am I compensated by the company in any way, shape or form. Rather, I have a vested interest in its continued development as an avid user of the application on a daily-basis.