Product changes

Niek Nijland

New feature - Events and UI Actions in web pages

Nowadays, almost every web page you'll make requires some (user) interaction and page behavior, for example a date picker that pops up for the user to choose a date in a submit form. With the latest release to the Betty Blocks platform, we are very excited to announce UI Actions. With UI Actions you can build interactive web pages even easier than before. You can use our pre-defined UI Actions, but you can also create them yourself to use them and to provide them to your page builders.

 

Check out this introduction video about Events and UI actions

 

How do I use it?

UI Actions are used at the events tab (third tab) in the toolbar left. Every event requires a trigger and a UI Action. The trigger says ‘when’ the event is happening, and the UI Action says ‘what’ is happening at the event. You can use pre-defined UI Actions (toggle element, show alert, etc.) and also add custom browser triggers. 

 

Why and how do I create a new UI Action? 

If we haven’t built your UI Action yet, then you can create one yourself. As an experienced developer, you can make UI Actions which you can deliver to your citizen developers. Create a new event and select the drop-down. Choose the lowest option ‘create new UI Action..’ in the list. You can now start building your UI Action. Give it a name, description and the required javascript code. We also support arguments, which allows you to create user input fields which appear in the event. These fields have to completed by the user when your UI Action is used.

 

How do I manage my UI Actions? 

UI Actions are supported by versions, which results in a controlled setup to develop your UI Actions. Every UI Action consists of a development (Dev) version. You can change and rebuild that version as much as needed. When the time is there, you can release it. After you’ve released it, the UI Action gets a released version. Your UI Action is now ready to be used in production. If you want to change the UI Action again, you can edit the development version and start the releasing process again.

 

Where are my UI Actions saved? 

UI Actions are saved in the Blocks Store. Why? To make your life easier in versioning and reusability. You can use all the functionality the Blocks Store offers regarding sharing and releasing UI Actions. You can make your UI actions available for an entire organization for example.

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