General Interface: Buttons, Scripts, and Dynamic Properties

I'm now using the latest version of General Interface: 3.8. This is the first version to drop the "TIBCO" moniker, i.e. it is the first version released since General Interface was made open source.

I've been using the example application mentioned in the previous post to become familiar with some of the basics of GI. For instance, indicating which script should run when a button is clicked is simple, if you know where to look. The script is not referenced in a property of the button; instead, it is accessed through the Events Editor palette. While the button object is selected in the Component Hierarchy palette, several events are listed in the Events Editor palette; the value specified for "Execute" is the name of the script to run when the button is clicked.

Another feature that was at first confusing: dynamic properties. General Interface allows you to specify property values in the Properties editor palette either as hard coded literals or as references to name/value pairs stored in an XML file; the latter is referred to as a dynamic property. There's no special syntax to indicate whether the value you enter in the Properties Editor is static or dynamic; apparently GI just figures that it's dynamic if it matches one of the dynamic property names you've defined, and otherwise it's static. Once you've entered a reference to a dynamic property in the Properties Editor, GI displays the reference in gray followed by the current value in brackets.

I haven't tried creating my own dynamic properties file yet, but the one in the example above is named appLabels_ljss.xml and is stored in the project's jss folder (by the way, dynamic properties files are sometimes referred to a "jss" files).