Axapta programming blog: practical HOWTOs

Wednesday, September 20, 2006

How to make Dynamics AX interface more user friendly with Tabax?

Does it sound familiar for you when you work with Axapta you get heaped with different windows after some time? Maksim Belugin has developed a great tool called Tabax to help organize all your opened windows into tabs, quickly change their positions and so on. Tool and more information about it can be found on the front page of www.axaptapedia.com.

I have just started to use this tool and I think its really great and can make life much easier for Axapta developers. Tabax designed for Axapta 3.0 and, as author says, tested with Axapta 3.0 SP4. I have tried to use it with Axapta 4.0 and found that with just a few small modifications you can run it on Microsoft Dynamics AX 4.0 as well.

Here they are, my changes to Tabax version 0.2.4 to make it work with Dynamics AX 4.0:


1. Open method Pathes and comment out this string:
//["\\Data Dictionary\\Feature Keys\\", #imageFeatureKey],

since there are no any feature keys in Axapta 4.0. Also add one more string
["\\Data Dictionary\\Perspectives\\", #imagePerspective], // added

2.Open unpack method and modify it like it shown here:

if((conlen(packedMenuUsageStatistics) > 4)) { // added

menuUsageStatistics=Map::create(packedMenuUsageStatistics);

if(!menuUsageStatistics)

menuUsageStatistics=new Map(Types::String, Types::Container);

} // added



I haven't got enough time to test it with Axapta 4.0, so it might have more issues, but at least it works with these modifications in place. Hopefully Maksim will make a full test of it with Dynamics AX 4.0 and present us with a new version of his great tool in the nearest future.

2 Comments:

  • I have to change the security key reference inside assertDevelopment method from "SysDevelopmentBasic" to "SysDevelopment" also to get it compile without error.

    Also, many icons went missing in the top menu bar within Tabax.
    And the first tab is always active in the tab interface.

    Do you have the same problem?

    I was trying on Ax40 SP1.

    By Anonymous Anonymous, at 1:13 AM  

  • I have the same problem in AX 4.0. The first tab always gets focus as if it was the active tab, although it isnt.

    By Blogger Helmut Wimmer, at 1:59 AM  

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