A first look at Tools 8.50’s new User Interface October 7, 2009
Posted by Duncan in PeopleTools 8.50.trackback
I’ve installed a Tools 8.50 VM and thought I’d post a few screenshots of the new ‘Swan UI’ improvements, just so to get those of you that haven’t taken the plunge yet excited.
First up is the new menu system:
It takes a couple of goes to get used to it, as you need to click the items in the top menu to get the menu to drop down, but you only need to hover over the menu items in the drop down menu to get them to unfold. If you click on a folder in the drop down menu then it loads the navigation collection for that folder. It’s pretty intuitive when you think about it, it just seemed inconsistent to begin with.
Once you’ve navigated into a component then you don’t need to go back to the root menu to find the next page, you can pick up the navigation from any step on the way by clicking the appropriate item in the breadcrumbs:
Also new are modal prompts (partial page refresh instead of reloading the entire page):
and also Hover Panels (probably not their real name):
I also liked the autocomplete on prompt fields:
and the automatic results display for portal registry search:
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Is the header configurable, too? Or is it the same as 8.4x? I notice you have a company name and the environment there for easy identification.
I believe that it’s the same as 8.4x. You have to edit a graphic to replace the logos.
This is a quite awesome release. And all made possible by PeopleSofts meta driven application and some clever JavaScript work. Well done PeopleTools labs!
Some glitches to iron out include…..
Look at the HTTP requests that get sent when you open a prompt lookup. There’s a double posting of the entire form.
Also, during the processing of a rountrip (ie a fieldchange) try hitting the save button or the delete row button on a grid. You get feedback to say it’s saving when it’s not!
Thanks for the update. I will be following yours and others OOW reports daily.
You mention that you used the Tools 8.50 VM – I would like to try out the Tools without going through the aggravation of a full install – can you direct me to a site / instructions on getting the VM image? Thanks!
I don’t believe that there currently is a VM image that you can download. It’s a good thing to go through the install yourself anyway, you get to know your system better that way.
On the subject of VM images, from the early reports from OOW it seems as though Oracle will be providing Linux versions of these at some point in the future.