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Help / Editors / Project editor / Project audits
  • Overview
  • Why use the UI audit?
  • How to?
  • Implementing the UI audit and resolving issues
  • Enabling or disabling UI audits for all projects
  • Examples of detected problems
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Stored procedures
UI audit: Detect obsolete features
Overview
The lifecycle of some projects span several years: this is quite common.
Projects often include features that date from the time the project was created. Some of these features are now outdated or have been replaced by better, more secure features.
Likewise, some options available by default in a previous version have become useless or inefficient. Sometimes, it is necessary to enable more modern options.
Starting with version 27, WINDEV, WEBDEV and WINDEV Mobile highlight outdated features and suggest using the new features available.
Why use the UI audit?
By following the recommendations of the UI audit and using new features in your projects:
  • You improve the performance of the editor:
    Using controls with deprecated features can have a negative impact on the performance of your editors, slow down execution, generation, template updates, etc, ...
    It is therefore a good idea to replace these old features with up-to-date alternatives.
  • You improve performance at runtime:
    Old features slow down execution.
    A simple way to increase the speed of your applications is to replace these outdated features.
  • You reduce page size and memory consumption:
    In WEBDEV in particular, using controls with outdated features or parameters can result in larger and more memory-intensive pages.
    Updating your controls will significantly optimize size and memory consumption!
How to?

Implementing the UI audit and resolving issues

By default, the UI audit is enabled when you open an old project in version 27 or later.
To enable/disable the UI audit, go to the "Display" tab, "Help for edit" group and check or uncheck "UI audit".
If the UI audit is enabled, you will see the following when you open a window or page that uses an old feature:
  1. The icon appears in the upper-right corner of the element (Table or Combo Box control, for example).
  2. A tooltip appears when hovering over the icon.
  3. Clicking the icon opens a popup window.
    In this window, you can:
    • fix the problem. In most cases, you can directly fix the problem by clicking "Fix" in the popup window.
      In some cases, if the fix requires changing an option, the popup window allows you to open the control description to make the change.
    • disable the recommendation: The error for this control will not be displayed.
      Reminder: Disabled errors can be re-enabled from the context menu of the Compilation errors pane, in "List of disabled errors" (shortcut: Alt + I).
    • use the context menu at the top of the popup window to:
      • Select the control.
      • Open the control description window.
      • Temporarily disable errors for this control. Errors will be re-enabled the next time the element containing the error is opened.
      • Temporarily disable errors for all controls. Errors will be re-enabled the next time the element containing the error is opened.
    Tip: the link at the top of the popup window opens the control description window.
Remark: UI audit errors also appear when you run a static audit for the project. You can also fix the detected problems from the static audit window.

Enabling or disabling UI audits for all projects

You can enable or disable UI audits for all projects.
For WINDEV or WINDEV Mobile:
  1. Open the window editor options: on the "Home" tab, in the "Environment" group, expand "Options" and select "Options of the window editor".
  2. In the "Controls" tab, select or deselect the "Disable UI audit for all projects" option.
  3. Validate.
For WEBDEV:
  1. Open the page editor options: on the "Home" tab, in the "Environment" group, expand "Options" and select "Options of the page editor".
  2. In the "Controls" tab, select or deselect the "Disable UI audit for all projects" option.
  3. Validate.

Examples of detected problems

The UI audit can highlight errors in the controls:
  • an HTML control still in IE6 mode (which prevents modern content from being displayed correctly),
  • a Chart or Shape control for which anti-aliasing has not been enabled,
  • a Camera control in an old version,
  • any control for which a new useful option is available but has not been enabled,
  • a Combo Box control that can be made resizable or set to auto-size,
  • enable autocomplete for controls with a file path input mask,
  • ...
More general problems are also detected:
  • a background image with transparency but without clipping (which consumes resources unnecessarily),
  • an Internal Window control that points to an Internal Window not found in the project,
  • Binding to an non-existent item or variable,
  • Control not compatible with the current configuration,
  • Control too small to be touchscreen-friendly,
  • Conflicting anchors,
  • Multiple controls with the same logical name,
  • 2 OK or Cancel buttons in a window,
  • ...
Minimum version required
  • Version 27
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Last update: 11/16/2023

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