Thursday, September 11, 2014

APEX 5.0: Bye bye Tabs, welcome to Navigation Lists

In previous versions of Oracle APEX (< 5.0) you could use Tabs for the navigation in your application.


Tabs were not that flexible, they were typical on top of your page in a specific look and feel. Since APEX 4.x I started to dismiss using Tabs in most of the cases, instead I would use a List with the "Page Tabs" template if people wanted that look and feel.

APEX 5.0 introduces the concept of a "Navigation List" that replaces the tabs. It's the same mechanism as before (a normal List which you find in Shared Components), but you can define in your User Interface which list to use as your Navigation List.

Go to Shared Components > User Interface Attributes:


Next in the User Interface section, click on Desktop (or the User Interface you want to adapt):


In the Attributes section you can define the List you want to use as "Navigation List"


Behind the scenes the Navigation List is put on the screen where the #NAVIGATION_LIST# token is specified in your Page Template.


The Navigation List is another example where APEX 5.0 makes common behaviour of developers more declarative and embedded in the product.

6 comments:

  1. Thank you so much!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi is it Possible to create a Menue List in a region with different level and and with headers that have no links

    like this

    Masterdata (nolink)
    -> Datapage1 (link)
    -> Datapage2 (link)
    -> Datapage3 (link)

    Help (nolink)
    -> Helppage1 (link)
    -> Helppage1 (link)
    -> Helppage1 (link)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Sure, create a navigation list and set as parent the master data

    ReplyDelete
  4. Thank you so much!

    I copied one application, invest a lot of time to fix from 2-level-tab to navigation menu, but forgot to reset the grid layout
    so I have to copy it again, but with your blog I complete my idea to copy my finished navigation menu to this application and set it as default!

    ReplyDelete
  5. Can I refresh this navigation menu on some button action in a page
    I am trying to trigger apexrefresh event on navigation menu id,but no luck

    ReplyDelete
  6. I am trying to trigger apexrefresh event on navigation menu id in a page,but no luck
    Is it possible to refresh it

    ReplyDelete