Flexible UI
This offers capabilites to adapt the existing UI. It allows you to change the contents and appearance of the browser iView and details dialog box. To simplify development work, it offers predefined components called
Ready-Mades, which you can integrate in collection, resource and poperty renderers. Although flexible UI is not designed for the creation and adaptation of screenflow, you can use it to include confirmation screens for actions associated with ICommand or IMassCommand objects. This so-called
One-Step Screenflow
is only suitable for a limited adaptation of the screenflow.
Web Dynpro
The creation of a new UI and corresponding screenflow is possible with Web Dynpro technology. You can develop a new KM component as a Web Dynpro application and define the UI and screenflow using the capabilities of Web Dynpro.
Initial information on the use of Web Dynpro for KMC is available in a tutorial on SDN. For more information, search for Using Knowledge Management Functions in Web Dynpro on SDN.
The knowledge Management application provides a number of renderer packages that allow a highly flexible representation of explorer controls. The explorer controls enable the end user to navigate through repositories and perform basic operations on resources. They are the main point of access to the KM repositories and therefore play a central role in the application. For this reason it is essential that they can be customized and adapted in different ways to meet the requirements of different types of users. This flexibility is achieved with the functions of the renderer and layout service packages which make it possible to adapt the controls in appearance, behavior and complexity to suit different individuals or groups. For example, an administrator can be presented with a complex browse control that provides meta-information about resources and mass actions. A casual user can be presented with a simple control that has an attractive appearance, a few essential commands and an easy intuitive form of navigation.
The classes and interfaces of the renderer packages provide the framework that makes customization of the behavior and appearance of controls possible. Essentially, customization is controlled by defining values for parameters that influence appearance and behavior of rendering components that "understand" these parameters.
The way in which objects within the rendering environment are
instantiated and configured is controlled by the rendering framework.
For this reason, the four factories LayoutControllerFactory, ResourceRendererFactory , UICommandFactory and CollectionRendererFactory and have to be used to get correctly instantiated and parameterized instances of ILayoutController, IResourceRenderer, IResourceRenderer, ICollectionRenderer, ICommand and IMassCommand.
The configuration is used by the factories to retrieve the correct instance of an interface. This allows the implementation of new classes that can be mapped in the configuration and then used for the rendering process.
Further Information