Beyond SControls: Learn to Use Visualforce in Your Force'com Apps

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Beyond S-Controls Learn to Use Visualforce in
Your Force.com Apps
Track Admin to App Builder

• Jon Mountjoy, salesforce.com
• Jesse Lorenz, salesforce.com

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Safe Harbor Statement
Safe harbor statement under the Private
Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995 This
presentation may contain forward-looking
statements including but not limited to
statements concerning the potential market for
our existing service offerings and future
offerings. All of our forward looking statements
involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. If
any such risks or uncertainties materialize or if
any of the assumptions proves incorrect, our
results could differ materially from the results
expressed or implied by the forward-looking
statements we make. The risks and uncertainties
referred to above include - but are not limited
to - risks associated with possible fluctuations
in our operating results and cash flows, rate of
growth and anticipated revenue run rate, errors,
interruptions or delays in our service or our Web
hosting, our new business model, our history of
operating losses, the possibility that we will
not remain profitable, breach of our security
measures, the emerging market in which we
operate, our relatively limited operating
history, our ability to hire, retain and motivate
our employees and manage our growth, competition,
our ability to continue to release and gain
customer acceptance of new and improved versions
of our service, customer and partner acceptance
of the AppExchange, successful customer
deployment and utilization of our services,
unanticipated changes in our effective tax rate,
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Investor Information section of our website at
www.salesforce.com/investor. Salesforce.com, inc.
assumes no obligation and does not intend to
update these forward-looking statements, except
as required by law.
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Agenda

• S-Controls were cool (really!)
• S-Controls have issues (its a shame)
• Introducing Visualforce (good medicine)
• More Visualforce (now youre just showing off)
• Summary (what we want you to remember)

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S-Controls Were Cool
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S-Control Foibles
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S-Control Foibles Compatibility
vs.
vs.
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S-Control Foibles Compatibility
4?! 4?!
8?!
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S-Control Foibles Productivity

• S-Controls contain both business logic and UI
• Difficult to create and maintain common look and
  feel
• Small changes may require complete overhaul
• Modifying the UI can lead to unintended changes
  in the business logic
• Not everyone is a UI expert, not every UI expert
  is a skilled programmer
• you must be both to be productive with client
  programming

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S-Control Foibles Performance

• It looks simple
• But for most S-Controls...

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S-Control Foibles Performance

• This is what happens under the hood

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Welcome to Visualforce
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Visualforce A One Stop Shop
Fetch URL
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Visualforce solution

• Create pages on server - deliver to client,
  fully composed.
• Server-side access to server-side data
• Force.com addresses browser incompatibilities
• Continue to enable Ajax interactions where
  needed
• Complete, modular set of components with
  standard look and feel
• Extend the component library with Custom
  Components 

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Model View Controller Pattern
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Visualforce - MVC Breakdown
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Visualforce - MVC in Practice
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(No Transcript)
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Styling S-Control
http//wiki.apexdevnet.com/index.php/Stylesheets_a
nd_S-Controls_Best_Practice_Guide
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Styling - Visualforce
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CSS Styling (optional)
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CSS Styling (optional)
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CSS Styling (optional)

• ltapexpage standardcontroller"Account"
  showheader"false" extensions"AccountExtension"gt
• lthtmlgtltheadgtlttitlegt!Account.Namelt/titlegt
• ltstylegt
• body font-family Arial, Helvetica,
  sans-serif
• table color4d4d4d widthauto
  text-alignleft text-indent5px
  vertical-alignmiddle text-decorationnone
  border1px solid 466e92 border-collapsecollapse
  min-width375px font-size13px
• td, th padding5px height1px border1px
  solid 466e92
• lt/stylegt
• lt/headgt
• ltbodygt
• ltdiv style"margin 20px"gt
• ltdiv style"font-size18px margin-top0px
  margin-bottom20px color0067ac"gt
• !Account.Name
• lt/divgt
• ltapexformgt
• lttablegt
• lttrgt
• lttdgtAccount Namelt/tdgt
  lttdgt!Account.Namelt/tdgt
• lt/trgt
• ...

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Build a Public Website
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More Advanced Demos

• Visualforce Components
• Email templates
• PDF generation
• File Upload

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Call to Action

• Our best advise to you is to embrace Visualforce
  now
• Learn how easy it is to code your own Visualforce
  pages by exploring online resources
• Start with a fresh application
• Simpler than porting an existing S-Control
• Once you're up to speed, with fresh insight and
  inspiration consider rewriting those old, slow
  and inefficient S-Controls

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Remember

• Performance and Execution
• Browser Compatibility
• Native Styling/Formatting
• Developer Productivity

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QUESTION ANSWER SESSION
Jon Mountjoy
Force.com Community Manager
Jesse Lorenz
Force.com Evangelist
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