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| Siebel Call Center (complete with good ol' iHelp and the new Communications panel) |
So let's get a little bit deeper into the new theme...
One Theme to Rule them All
Yes, that's right. At one blow, we now have a single, common theme for all Open UI enabled applications. This includes the relatively young family of Siebel Mobile Applications, all former HI applications and the new CX Partner Portal or Self Service Portal applications.
For mobile applications, this means to say goodbye to any mobile-specific renderer that used jQuery Mobile (more on that in a separate article) and say hello to all the desktop features on a tablet.
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| Siebel Sales mobile application, Aurora theme. |
Responsive Web Design
You don't have Siebel Mobile Applications but a lot of tablets or 800x600 monitors? Do not despair, the Aurora theme is clever enough (thanks to CSS media queries) to adapt to smaller screens.
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| Adding items to a |
List applets are more intelligent than ever. When a touch screen is detected, you can use swipe gestures in lists to navigate through the list of records or scroll horizontally.
The out-of-the-box Aurora theme supports desktop screen sizes and tablets. For a Siebel view to fit on a smartphone, you will need a custom theme and probably some custom physical renderers. But anyway, the prospect of designing views and applets once and using them across devices is very appealing.
New Sidebar Screen Menu
IP 2014 introduces a new navigation pattern called sidebar. Screens can be selected from a flip menu. Because of the distinctive icon, this menu style is also known as 'hamburger' menu.
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| Sidebar menu for screens in IP 2014 |
For those who wish to use tab or tree style navigation, just go to the User Preferences screen and select your preferred navigation. Tabs and Trees are still here.
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| Tab navigation in IP 2014 Aurora (with Reports panel) |
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| Tree navigation in IP 2014 Aurora |
The hawk-eyed among you astute readers might have spotted the new icons for applet buttons. Going down the rabbit hole into the browser's style debugger reveals that Oracle has created a new font (look in the new FONTS directory) and the icons are not bitmaps but (scalable) characters.
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| Click to enlarge |
Migration from pre-IP 2014 Themes
It might be a bit early to enumerate all the implications of the new Aurora theme for those among us who have invested in custom themes in IP 2013 or earlier, probably building upon the 'gray' or 'tangerine' themes provided by Oracle.
First observations show that some CSS classes are no longer used, so custom themes will need a bit of attention before an IP 2014 application looks exactly the same as in the IP 2013 version.
If you have invested heavily in customizing Siebel Mobile Applications in IP 2013 or earlier, especially with custom themes or jQuery Mobile, you're probably in for an extra round of work, but your mileage may vary.
Summary
There might be a lot more to discover with the new Aurora theme that comes with Siebel Innovation Pack 2014. It was a bold step for Oracle to abandon the themes used in previous releases and redesign the application from scratch using modern web design paradigms such as RWD. The long-term benefits of being able to use any Siebel application on any device will sure outweigh the short-term issues that some of us will face during migration of customizations. For now, I leave you with the advise to get your hands dirty and familiarize yourself with the changes and enhancements that Aurora brings us.
have a nice day
@lex
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