Customizing the Development Environment Previous Up One Level Next
Customizing the Development Environment



Building Custom Wizards

This section describes how to give users an easy way to enter information that can then be published on the Web or used to drive ColdFusion applications. Wizards are an integral part of many software products today because they invite users to perform complex tasks in an orderly, comprehensible interface. Another benefit is that a well-designed wizard controls its input and ensures a high probability of user success.

Allaire makes extensive use of wizards in its visual tools and now extends that capability to developers. If you have worked with VTML to create or edit tag dialog boxes, you are familiar with building interface containers and controls and with defining page layout. You can now add the Wizard Markup Language (WIZML) to your skill set and add wizards to your applications.

Note To create a wizard:
  1. Write a wizard definition file (.vtm) to specify the pages, parameters, output, and logical flow.
  2. Implement one or more output template files (.wml) for the wizard.
  3. Create wizard graphic (.bmp) files.

Each of these steps is described in detail in the following sections.

Saving wizard files

The recommended way to organize wizards and supporting files is to save the vtm and wml files in the \Wizards\Custom folder and to save the image files in the \Wizards\Images folder of your visual tools directory.


Note Whenever you make changes to a VTM file or create a new one, save the file, then press Ctrl+Alt+Shift+C to apply the changes.
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