Using Tab Groups to Organize Fields

You may have record panels containing a large number of fields, perhaps 50 or more, and displaying all these fields on the screen at one time may overwhelm application users.  In these cases, you can use tab panels to group subsets of your fields into individual tabs for consolidated, better organized display.

Step 1:  Navigate to the page level where you wish to place the tabs, such as the ‘fields’ section of a record or table panel control.  You may optionally remove the existing set of fields.

 

Step 2:  Drag several blank panels from the Toolbox onto your page, one for each group of fields you wish to create.  In this example, we use the ‘Blank Panel without Header’ panel.

Step 3:  Navigate (drill into) to the first blank panel and drag the appropriate fields and labels from the Toolbox into the blank panel.  Repeat this for each blank panel (tab group).

 

Step 4:  Navigate back to the page level showing the newly added blank panels.  Then apply tab groups (Right-click, Insert, Tabs).  This creates a tab for each group of fields.

Step 5:  In the Property Sheet, rename the tab panels with meaningful names.

 

 

Example: Placing Master and Detail Panels within the Same Tab Group

In Show Record pages, Iron Speed Designer typically places detail panels below the master panel.  However, it is sometimes useful to put both master (parent) and detail (child) panels within the same set of tabs.  This places both master and detail panels at the same visual level.

Here is a typical Show Customers Record page with the master panel (Customers) at the top and the detail panels (Quarterly Orders and Orders) at the bottom.

Here is the same Show Customers Record page with all three panels within the same tab group.  The Customers panel (master) is displayed at the same level visually as the detail panels.

Step 1: Navigate to the page level layout using the page section dropdown in the Layout Editor.

The page level layout should show most of the panels on the page.  In my example, there is a Customers record control (A1) and two detail panels (A2).

 

Step 2:  Remove the tabs (right-click, Remove, Tabs) encapsulating the detail (child) panels.  We'll add them back later.

 

Step 3:  Move the master (parent) panel into the same cell as the detail panels.

 

Step 4: Re-apply the tabs (right-click, Insert, Tabs).

 

Step 5:  You can optionally change the tab text via the Property Sheet for the TabPanel controls.