Eh??? This Documentation Is Really Hard To Understand

All I want to do is run a SQL query and load the grid with the formatted output of the query with each row having a URL LINK.

I love the sleekness of your grid, but for the life of me man, I can't understand your documentation or how this thing is suppose to work.

Your documentation is really, REALLY sketchy!

Am I alone on this or do others agree?

I second that motion

Guys,

Documentation is fine, all you need to do is call the data in an array, use a for next loop around the script after var myData, and finally set obj.setRowProperty("count", <[=total]>); with the total of the array.

Adding links etc is simple too. It's common sense rather than documentation.

Yup, its the common sense which is missing this side...
Could you help with that?

I'd agree, the documentation, whilst good once you've got your head around the way the object & its heirachy work, initally almost puts you off.

A reference guide is all fair and well, but you need a better introductory guide...

Or do a javascript cource and learn object structure and have some patience and learn by doing.

this documentation is a big piece of shit. i cant do simplest things like repaint. API is chaotic like hell and docs are fu**ed up = unusable thing

To John Ophof - if taking a course and learning by doing is what's required to use this grid, then it's not really a commercial product that people would pay money for, is it? Apparently, it's only for the javascript programming masters who already know how to create things like this but just didn't have the time to do it themselves. There are lesser mortals who need to use grids like this that need lots of clear explanation, examples and handholding to make it work. If there were good documentation, my company would have bought it. But as it is, I can't get it to show up in my jsp at all. Fishing through the support forum for the answers to the simplest things is tedious, time-consuming and off-putting. It's a great tool, if only I could understand how to make it work, but I'm a Java programmer with no javascript and just basic html having to improve somebody else's jsp.

Sorry, but I have to side with John on this one. It's not Alex's job to teach anyone ASP programming nor is it his job to teach you OOP in JavaScript. If you have no JavaScript knowledge and basic HTML then you should not be doing business oriented web development. This grid isn't intended for someone to drop onto a personal web page, make a few simple edits and have the grid change the world. In case anyone missed it, ActiveWidgets is a toolkit. That means you have to know how to program in order to use it. I'm sorry Alex if that means that a few people will be turned off by it, but for those that understand OOP this is a great toolkit. My company's web program (yes program, not web page) went from being OK to outstanding once we started using this grid. Our customers love it! So if you want to shine in the eyes of your boss, and if you want your company to look great on the web, I suggest that you quit whimpering, learn how to program and then it will all look great to you. But until then, you are going to stay confused no matter how many docs we throw at you. This is not a product that you are going to be proficient in over night. Have patience and it will all work out.
I will get down off my soap box now.

If anyone strongly disagrees with me I can be reached at jimbo at diamondcomputing dot com

It's true, no one should have to explain to me OOP or js but man, I just dont geddit. It would be great to have some sort of 'how to get this amazing thing into your websites' sort of guide for the unititiated.

Just as an example... I'm a css/xhtml developer looking for an easy way to help my client include tables in his pages (he wants to put a new table up per week and doesn't know a thing about html). This might be the solution but I cant even get deep enough into the solution to figure out if that's the case because the documentation speaks in terms that are over my head. Agreed, that's no one's fault but my own but this guy would be willing to pay the commercial license for the solution.

I guess I'm saying there are lots of low-level geeks like me that are developing sites for businesses that could use a product like this. It likely behooves Active Widget's bottom line to make sure I understand it enough to sell it to my clients.

I dunno about them other guys but I'm not 'bitching'. It is what it is and that's cool. Where it is is just beyond me, and subsequently my clients, at this point.

Looks amazing and eventually, I'll geddit.

Will

as an example.

The 'Documentation' sidebar... The first article listed there is "Building complex html in script". Four articles below that is "Active Widgets Overview". That's, well to me anyway, a little backwards.

Let's look at the first 'tutorial'. The very first sentence is: "Lets look how we can display two-dimensional javascript array data using the grid control." Um, what in the hell? Maybe obvious to you real men who develop web apps in Vi but, um, what in the hell?

Again, not bitching. Really. Just trying to point out how it appears to me and how it might appear to other people like me.

Will,

I very much appreciate what you (and others) say here. First of all, yes, I know the current documentation is simply not good. Even for hardcore JavaScript developers. And I could not imagine when I was building this library that it could be usefull for anyone who is not a JavaScript developer in the first place. This is mainly because the library is still very incomplete - lots of key features are missing. So the question for me is whether I should spend the time building missing feature or explaining how you could do this feature yourself (and you should really have good JavaScript sklls for doing this). I feel that currently I still have to focus primarily on the library development until the minimum functionality (required by nearly everyone) is implemented. Only at this point someone will be able to use the product 'as is' without learning what is inside and spending weeks trying to add standard functions. So I am very keen to solve this but unfortunately it will take some time.

On the other hand if someone already went through this dark learning exersize and can explain it in simple words to other people - I am more than willing to pay $$$ for this work (please contact me if you are willing to write 'beginners guide' or any other kind of documentation for this product). Any other sugestions are welcome too.

Thanks Alex.

I see what you mean, totally agree/understand and figured as much. I wish I had the skills to help out but I really dont.

YOUR WORK LOOKS AMAZING. Really, congrats. I'll be back around in a few months to see if I'm ready for it! Numsum will do for now...

Good luck to you.

Will

I'm a web developer with enough experience to understand how your product works. I'm looking for controls to use on my companies commercial website. I think I'm the kind of person this product is targetted at - the kind of person you want to convince to give you lots of money for a commercial licence.


I started looking at this product two days ago. It's taken me two days just to get the grid control onto the page, fill it with my dynamic data, and do some basic styling on it. It's going to take me the rest of a week to get events handled exactly the way I want. I need to customize it quite a lot.

This task should have taken me less than a day; with better documentation and examples, it would have. but it won't, because I'll have to hunt through these forums for answers to my questions, rather than looking at good documentation.


I would perhaps ask some questions here myself, but I've seen many 'answers' which attack the poster personally, give no answer, or otherwise fail to help, and those put me off from posting.


Yes, the documentation is very lacking. The main thing that would have helped me would have been more example pages - LOTS more example pages.

Robin,
Are you using ver 1.x or 2.x?

In ver 2.x there are more examples and the example source code is much more commented and by simply looking at it, most if not all your questions will be answered. Play with the samples in the QuickRef folder and in less then 2 hours I know you will have a pretty good understanding of how the pre-built controls work.
What you won't learn from the samples is how to create your own new controls. I am working on a new control that I will release the source code to once I am finished and it will show how easy it is to create such new controls. Once you learn the secret to 2.x, creating new controls is a snap.

How about forgetting about all the bickering and let somebody know what kind of example you are looking for? do you pull your data from a database?
If so, what language are you using?
I can post examples in ASP for anybody that needs them. I can even show you how to use xml so you don't have to loop through your recordset to build the grid. Feel free to post more questions. Most people here aren't trying to attack. Some of the people on these forums do get a little psycho though. Ignore John Ophof and Jim Hunter, negative comments. Post a question, somebody will be nice enough to help you. Me, if possible. One of the cool things about being a community like this is getting a chance to help others and show off your own skills when you get a chance.

Hi Jim Shaffer ,
Thanks in advance,I would like some asp examples please , using xml as well please
betsprint@btinternet.com
Mike Bruce

There is an ASP/ADODB example for AW 2.0 here -

http://www.activewidgets.com/javascript.forum.12597.0/simple-asp-adodb-recordset-example.html

Several XML examples are in the package /examples/old/ folder

For the version 1.0.x the ASP example is in /examples/asp/ folder and XML examples in /examples/grid/xml-...