The Winter 2023 m-Power Release Candidate contains one of our most notable enhancements: a complete overhaul to the m-Painter Editor. The goal of this upgrade was to deliver a more streamlined editor that feels like it is part of the larger m-Power platform. Besides from integration, we also strived to ensure that m-Painter was smarter, easier to use, and allowed you to do more tasks right within the graphical interface. Below, please check out a highlight from a Webinar where some of these features were discussed. After that, please check out some individual documentation links that talk about these key features in more detail.

m-Painter Overiew

Key Features

Improved Contextual User Experience

In an effort to improve transparency regarding what options are available with m-Painter, we’ve removed the right click context menu. Instead, m-Painter now utilizes an element panel that automatically shows the proper options based on the currently selected element. More information about the element panel can be found here.

Improved HTML design and layout capabilities

The Form Layout and Grid Layout allows developers to control how their pages are structured without having to do any coding whatsoever. All layout elements are available in a very easy graphical interface designed to allow precise control of how elements are positioned on the page. More information about this functionality can be found here.

Reduce Need to Overwrite HTML

m-Power developers both new and old are often flummoxed when prompted to overwrite their HTML. On one hand, they probably want to retain any work they have done already. On the other hand, they want to incorporate their new changes. m-Painter now gives developers the ability to replace specific elements after recompile. Essentially, this gives developers the ability to save/replace specific elements on the page without disrupting other areas. Learn more about this process here.

New Form Input Options

While inputs typically default to traditional input boxes, developers can convert those to other inputs. While they are probably most familiar with converting them to a drop-down list or a combobox, m-Painter now supports two new input options: Toggle Switches and Bootstrap Radio buttons. Learn more about these two helpful input features here.

Improved Import Editor

During application build, the concept of importing multiple applications together onto the same screen is vital. m-Painter allows developers the ability to do this either by importing in the entire page, just the main data table, or a custom element of their choosing. All the while, fully working within the graphical interface. Learn more about this process here.

New Totals & Percentage Feature

There are scenarios where developers may want to reference a total or percentage in a retrieval or a maintainer. While these templates don’t support totaling directly, m-Painter makes it easy to bring in totaled values in from reports into your application. Learn more about this process here.

Featured Component Selector

Developers can utilize the component selector to add many helpful UI elements to their page, such as cards, tabs, widgets, buttons, badges, and data lists. Learn more about these helpful features here.

Styling Panel

The styling panel gives developers the ability to add in-line styles for any selected element. This could be helpful from changing font size, color, style, border radius, margin, height, width etc. During the webinar where m-Painter was introduced, the styling wizard is discussed here.

Conditional Rendering

m-Painter allows you to conditionally display text, set colors based on field values, hide/show elements based on user roles, and toggle elements based on user clicks. You can read more about these features here.

Hide Repeating Data

Sometimes users request reports to not repeat the same value in subsequent rows as they deem this to be too redundant. m-Painter allows you to easily suppress this duplicate data. You can read more about this feature here.

Improved Signature Support

The ability to capture and/or render signatures has been enhanced with the upgrade to m-Painter. Learn how to easily capture and render user signatures here.

Wrapping Content into Cards/Tabs

Usually developers want to give their reports/applications a bit of polish. One way to do this is to wrap content into professional looking cards or useful tabs. m-Painter makes wrapping content in these containers a breeze. Learn more about this process here.

Improved Key/Value Lookup

Directing m-Painter to return back a specific value based on a given key can now be easily implemented through m-Painter. This is useful when you want to make your application more user-friendly by returning back a better value (“Backordered”) rather than the arbitrary code (“B”). Learn more about this process here.

Supporting Data Lists

Data Lists are a new concept in the m-Painter lexicon. They allow you to link out to a separate application and have access to all the applicable data but with none of the markup. This allows developers to reuse applications for their data without referencing their layout. Learn more about this process here.

Named versions

The upgrade to m-Painter now allows developers to name specific versions of their application as they save them. This is handy in the event you need to go back and restore from a previous version. Learn more about this feature here.

Easily Add Fields into Existing Apps

A common task within m-Painter is adding fields to the presentation layer after you have customized your application. m-Painter allows you to accomplish this task effortlessly. Learn more about this process here.

Dropdown Wizards

Whether you want to create a dropdown via a quicklist, a retrieval based dropdown, or a data model, the dropdown wizard has been significantly enhanced to streamline this process. Learn more about implementing dropdown lists here.