The administrator back-end is at:
/cgi/ex.cgi/admin /cgi/ex.cgi/admin/<Module>
The base panel of the admin interface is a launcher menu that lets you launch other panels and interfaces, as needed. It includes all of your plugins, organized into categories. The Overview category includes general views of your whole system or site, including:
If your plug-in partitions its material by section, you can start with a section selector, as in v3. For CMS tools, it may be friendlier (fewer clicks) to just show all of the available child objects with their section identified. For example, a calendar tool could just show all of the available calendars in all sections the admin has access to, rather than asking them to select a section first.
2-pane control panels (as used in the old Document plug-in, for instance) are no longer supported.
The ExSite::UI class replaces v3's ExSite::HTML class. It has a lot of the same sorts of widgets, but they are called in an OOP manner, eg.
$out .= &ExSiite::HTML::BasicBox(%options); # v3 $out .= $ui->BasicBox(%options); #v4
Although similar, many of the widgets have been replaced with Bootstrap equivalents. There are a few new widgets in v4:
| widget | description |
|---|---|
|
navitem |
generic clickable element |
|
dispitem |
generic display element |
|
ErrorMsg |
displays an error message |
|
SuccessMsg |
displays a confirmation message |
|
HelpMsg |
displays help information |
|
SuccessBox |
same as SuccessMsg, but with a title and frame |
|
HelpBox |
same as HelpMsg, but with a title and frame |
|
AlertBox |
a floating dialog, that can be dismissed |
|
Figure |
a graphic with a caption |
|
TreeView |
replaces old DynList |
|
OverlayFrame |
an iframe that floats over the main screen |
|
TitleBar |
an application titlebar with optional links |
|
Menu |
a vertically-stacked menu of links |
|
Spinner |
a please-wait spinner |
|
FATool |
a small icon tool button, using Font Awesome |
The calling conventions of these widgets have been normalized and made consistent across all calls. There are some standard parameters that can be passed to many of these widgets:
| parameter | description |
|---|---|
|
tone |
good, bad, warning, important, neutral - sets the general styling of the widget |
|
size |
l, m, s - sets the size of the widget |
|
ucicon |
name of a unicode icon to use |
|
faicon |
name of a Font Awesome icon to use |
|
icon |
url of an image to use as an icon |
|
confirm |
pops up a confirmation dialog with this message when clicked |
Note that buttons and tools, which accept an url parameter to link to something, can also accept a links parameter, which is a list of things to link to. This will generate a pop-up menu when clicked.
The OverlayFrame widget is particularly useful when you switch contexts, such as:
To make use of the OverlayFrame, simply insert it into your page:
$out .= $ui->OverlayFrame();
To make a link open in the OverlayFrame, use this method:
my $link = $ui->OLFrameLink($url);
$out .= $ml->a("open in OverlayFrame",{href=>$link});