Friday, November 28, 2008

How to list APEX Dictionary views using SQL

Hi,

I hope this isn't old news but it seems that whenever someone talks about the APEX dictionary they talk about going into the development application and viewing them there. You can also access the dictionary using SQL. Here's how:

select *
from apex_dictionary
where column_id = 0

or

select distinct apex_view_name
from apex_dictionary

Of course you can remove the "where column_id=0" portion and get a list of the all the columns for the views etc.

Wednesday, November 19, 2008

CSS Specificity

Hi,

Most APEX developers will eventually get asked to brand their application or "make it look nice". If you are like myself, and are not a graphic artist, this can be quite a challenge since it is an art to make a web pages look really good.

I've had to do read up on it over the past few months. I finally read an article on CSS specificity (try say that 5 times in a row :-). CSS Specificity is like putting a score or weight on each CSS definition so you know which ones will "override" other definitions.

Here's the article: http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2007/07/27/css-specificity-things-you-should-know/

There's also a link to the CSS specificity calculator: http://www.rebelinblue.com/specificity.php