In trying to lend a hand in converting files to use Panorama’s web rendering, I’m running into a number of items that I’m unable to explain to him, and some that seem to be incomplete.
For instance, the Web Form Converter has Advanced Options with 6 panels, the first being Form Actions.
The Submit Form Action has a popup menu that has built-in choices plus a listing of procedures in the database. But what do these do?
UpdateRecord likely selects an existing record and updates it. Then what? The Followup and other subsequent choices seem to be what he should be setting for that, but they list only forms in the file, not procedures. Is it therefore necessary to build a separate form for each of these scenarios?
If so, how do I get them listed in the Advanced Options popups? Creating them, and even uploading them to the server doesn’t do it.
query, as shown in the screenshot, has no choices.
There’s no Help on these items so trial and error and/or posting here seem to be the only options in figuring it out.
To answer one of my own questions, Form>Upload Form to Server does not make a form appear in the listed choices. Each form must be accessed via the Form popup in the Web Form Converter. Then a click on Upload to Server makes the form available in the Advanced Options panel.
Last post on this for now… With the forms uploaded to the server, I’m able to use a link to a procedure and get a response from the targeted procedure: http://URLHERE/cgi-bin/Panoramax.cgi?TestDB~HitMe
Going through Server Administration>Databases gives me what I expect to be working links to the uploaded forms
This feature is a carry over from Panorama 6 Server. The idea was to be able to make simple dynamic web pages with little or no programming. Unfortunately, this was probably a bit too simplistic, only very basic CRUD applications could be created. Also, this was all implemented using circa 2005 web technology - no AJAX, not responsive for mobile, etc. The bottom line is that almost no one used this, maybe even exactly no one used it.
When creating Panorama X Server, I went ahead and converted this system from Panorama 6 Server. It’s just a straight port, I didn’t change it in any way. I didn’t and don’t really expect anyone to use this in 2025, but the port was pretty quick and helped me to test Panorama X Server. And I figured if there was anyone actually using this system it would help them. But I haven’t heard from a single person about this, absolutely zero questions, so I don’t think it is in use anywhere.
As you say, there is no documentation for this in the Panorama X help file. But the logic is all the same as Panorama 6, so the Panorama 6 documentation will tell you what all of the options are you are asking about. The Panorama 6 documentation about this is quite extensive, more than a hundred pages I think.
You’re right, and that won’t be mentioned in the Panorama 6 documentation because Panorama 6 didn’t have any form uploading capability. When you upload a form that way, it simply uploads it to make it available for other Panorama users connected to that server. But for anything web related, you have to go thru the Web Form Converter.
It could be that there is a bug in Panorama - this was tested but not super tested. But I wouldn’t expect it to always fail out of the gate. There may be a step you missed. Please check out the Panorama 6 documentation if you really want to use this. Unfortunately, any help I can provide will probably be quite slow, because I haven’t used this system in probably 15 years or more, so I would need to study the documentation myself.
I would love to use this with the Pan X server but I do understand that it is not well documented (beyond what Pano 6 offered) and thus I am excited by what Jim C is willing to figure out and share. Cuz who couldn’t make use of this. It really would be very much used if it was polished a bit.
It was by sheer chance that I heard from two people within a matter of days for help in getting it implemented. Both have established sharing systems up and running with multiple users in the office and over the internet. After the problems I encountered yesterday, I told one that he should go with a roll-your-own HTML solution. The other had Pan 6 web processes in place that he wants to revive. Thus my questions.
I can think of three other potential users.
In the past, the only time I used Panorama’s built-in rendering (which proved to be very impressive) was in helping someone already working with it. Otherwise I’ve always built my own HTML forms and pages from scratch - largely with the help of a program such as Dreamweaver. I could then apply Panorama’s marvelous ability to use them as templates to send and/or receive data.
The fact that I alone built more than a dozen sites for clients using Panorama should certainly be a strong indication that the desire to use it with a web interface exists. My impression is that the ability has always been under-promoted. Want to publish a page of your products, or a price list of your services, a blog, or have your data available on your phone or tablet? See this 3-year-old thread for some of my thoughts on its application potenttial.
Meanwhile, I’ve extracted the 172 pages on Web Publishing from the Panorama 6 documentation. Much of it is irrelevant but intertwined is a lot that’s very useful. Anyone who wants a copy should just ask and I’ll email it.
I don’t know what I could have skipped. The forms were uploaded and appear in the list of forms as shown in the screen shot. The first is a full-fledged form with cells to be completed and has a FollowUp action chosen, etc. The others have nothing more than a single TextDisplay object as part of my experimenation to see how it works. With no procedures or data merging involved, the links under Forms should simply open and display them.
It doesn’t need a bit of polish - it needs a complete rewrite from scratch using modern web tools. At least a year of work, probably multiple years. Outside of a handful of Panorama die hards, no one is going to be interested in a web solution that doesn’t support responsive layouts for mobile, and AJAX for incremental web page updates. Ideally you would want support for your favorite web Framework - React, VUE, Ember, etc., or at least Bootstrap or Foundation. The table driven approach that Panorama web forms use is pretty much from the stone age of web development.
The built in web form rendering is fine if you only want to make desktop web pages and don’t care about responsive designs that will work well on mobile, and aren’t trying to use technologies like AJAX for incremental page updates. It’s basically doing the same thing that Dreamweaver does (update: apparently Dreamweaver now supports fluid grids to generate responsive pages, which Panorama’s web form builder does not).
The build in choices were an attempt to make “no code” web applications possible. And it was possible, as long as your application was very simple and you only needed the very basic functionality provided. Most applications need more than that, which is why there is a list of procedures. This allows you to ignore the “no code” options and code whatever you want. Especially in your case @JamesCook , you should probably go with that because you’re already an expert in writing web procedure code.
Exactly - the point was that you could create forms for each of these scenarios instead of having to learn how to write code to perform these operations. But that limits you to only the exact scenarios provided for in Panorama’s built in code.
The goal was for non-technical users to be able to create a web application by stringing together forms like Lego blocks, with no coding required. But that turned out to be a pipe dream.
When I said ‘a bit of polish’, that was one of those uncommon moments when I am trying to be kind.
In the same way that we know that most Panorama users use about 10% of what Panorama offers (and that number might be a bit high), there are many users that would just like to see their data online for their personal or very small business use. These are not pages that the public is going to be viewing. These are only for ‘internal’ use but yet at the same time, extremely valuable given that we do not have an iOS or iPadOS Panorama. There is a very big need for seeing Panorama data away from our computers. I have several users that are sitting with their Pano 6 versions due to not being able to move to Pano X and lose their web pages.
They are waiting for no reason then. Panorama X Server has had all of the capabilities of Panorama 6 Server, including for web publishing, for at least a couple of years now. In fact, it’s actually easier to port most web applications to Panorama X than regular Panorama applications. Most of the differences between 6/X are due to operating system changes between Apple’s “Carbon” APIs and the newer OS X APIs. But the web is the web, nothing changed.
All of your points are well taken and understood. But this particular item where we can’t get pages to open is what I’d like to hear about. Do I tell them to scrap their ambitions? Or can we get that much to work? Of course, if he’s reviving the rendering, there’s no way to know if there are other new obstacles.
or you should be able to use Check for Updates. However, since the current version is not a beta and this new one is, I think it will not automatically ask if you want to update when you launch, you’ll have to explicitly use Check for Updates.
Panorama has a special URL format that can be used to display a web form without any code. This format is:
This is the format used by the Server Administration>Databases page. The bug was not in rendering web forms, which worked fine if done from a procedure, but in simply processing this special URL format.
Regretfully…
Using Web Form Converter to process a form with a simple text display object, it shows the conversion is complete with no objects skipped and no warnings. No Advanced Options are set.
The Upload to Server button gets a notification that the form has been uploaded.
At this point, the form, named “TooMany” should be accessible via the URL of the server, plus /cgi-bin/Panoramax.cgi?TestDB~form~TooMany. Is there some other URL to try?
That’s the link provided by Server Administration, via Browse Database Web Links, yet all forms continue to get the error “Field or variable select does not exist.”
Per your post, I tested it using …/cgi-bin/Panoramax.cgi?/TestDB/form/TooMany and got the same error.
Procedures continue to respond.
If I’ve missed a step, I can’t find it.
The server is confirmed as running 10.2.1
02/03/2025 11:17:01 am Error in TestDB~form~TooMany: Field or variable select does not exist.
02/03/2025 11:17:01 am CODE ERROR: Field or variable select does not exist.
Thank you for specifying what version your server is running.
Please carefully review my previous post on this thread. Of course you’ll still be experiencing this problem, because you are still running the older version on your server. To get it to work, you’ll need to install the version I uploaded 4 days ago.
