Terminology Q&A
How does the MobileTogether system work?
•In MobileTogether Designer, you create MobileTogether Design files (MTD files), which have the file extension .mtd.
•These files are deployed to a MobileTogether Server, from where they are served to the mobile client device as MobileTogether solutions.
•The data files that are used to populate the design template/s in the MTD file may reside at their original locations or can be deployed to MobileTogether Server together with the MTD file.
•On the mobile client, the end user can view reports presented in a layout that is defined in the MTD file. End users can also use the MobileTogether solutions on their mobile client devices to update data files at their server locations.
What's in an MTD file and in a MobileTogether project?
•An MTD file is a native MobileTogether Designer document.
•Each MTD file contains one MobileTogether project.
•A MobileTogether project consists of one or more pages. A page is what the end user sees on the mobile client device.
•If there is more than one page in the MTD file, then these pages are connected to one another in a simple sequence, with the first page leading to the next, and so on, till the last page is reached.
•Sub-pages can also be defined, and these can be accessed from within main pages with the GoToSubpage action.
What does a page consist of?
•A page consists of page controls (also called 'controls' for short), formatted for viewing on the mobile client device and set up for user-interaction.
•Each control has different properties. These properties define associated content, formatting, and action/s to perform when an event of a control (control event, for short) is triggered.
•For each page, a set of page sources can be defined in the Page Sources Pane of that page.
•The content associated with a control can come from one (or more) of these page sources. Such data is accessed using the XPath/XQuery language.
•Via its controls, therefore, a page presents data to the end user and can accept modifications to its data sources.
What are the different kinds of events and actions in a design?
•Control events and their actions: Each control on a page can have events that trigger actions you can specify. For example, the combo box control has the OnFinishEditing event, which occurs when an item from the dropdown list of the combo box is selected. This event can be defined by you to trigger a desired action, such as changing data as a result of the combo box selection.
•Page events and their actions: The page itself (as a single entity) can be associated with events that trigger actions. For example, OnPageLoad is a page event. This event can be defined by you to trigger a desired action, such as loading data into the page from a certain data file.