ContextInfo Usage Guideline

RCUX Document Version 5.0.0 for Oracle® Fusion Middleware 11g Release 1 Patch Set 1 (11.1.1.2.0)
Last Updated 02-Feb-2011

The contextInfo component launches a pop-up dialog that provides additional contextual information or related actions for a specific item on a page.

Guideline Contents

General Principles
Pop-Up Dialog

Note: Images in this guideline are provided as a general reference, and may not be exact representations of FusionFX pages.

Related Guidelines

Guideline	Section	For Information About
Secondary Windows	Dialog Boxes	Details about dialog guidelines.

Related ADF Elements

Refer to the ADF Faces Rich Client demos page to find demos and tag documentation for the ADF elements related to this component:

ADF Element	Notes
af:contextInfo	Contextual Information component.
af:dialog	Dialog component for showing contextual information.
af:popup	Container for pop-up dialog.

General Principles

Purpose:

The contextInfo component provides an affordance for showing a pop-up dialog that provides additional contextual information or related actions for a specific item on a page. Contextual Info conserves space by presenting a small, temporary box of related information over the existing page when invoked by the user.

Elements of the Contextual Info component: glyph, launch element, icon and pop-up dialog

ContextInfo Elements: Default-State Glyph, Launch Element, Icon, and Pop-Up Dialog

Description:

The contextInfo component displays a glyph in any field where contextual actions are enabled on that region.
On mouseover, the glyph becomes an icon, which users click to open contextual information that usually appears in a dialog box. See Dialog Boxes in the Secondary Windows usage guideline.
The contextInfo component is supported only on input/output text, table cells, drill-down links, Select Choice lists, and LOV choice lists.

Contextual Info glyph appearing within the upper left corners of table cells.

ContextInfo Glyph (Shown in a Table Cell)

Showing launch element that has changed on hover from the original glyph, and a launched pop-up dialog.

Clicking on Glyph Launches contextInfo Pop-Up Dialog

Usage:

The contextInfo component is useful for presenting types of contextual information that can enable a user to quickly access data, other parts of the work area, or tools that support collaboration with others.
Use Contextual Info when it is necessary to show additional contextual information for a specific item on a page, for example, to show a full contact card associated with an employee name.
Use Contextual Info when users may benefit from having supplemental information or actions immediately available without leaving the current page, or when the information being presented is needed only temporarily.
Contextual Info should not be used if the actions contained within it require the user to update or refresh the launching page, for example, if the pop-up dialog contains the same field as the launching page.
When using input components, if a user enters invalid data, the icon should not display. If the user enters valid data but contextual information isn't available, clicking on the icon should display a message explaining why the information isn't available.

Pop-Up Dialog

Purpose:

Contains related information, images, titles, links, and icon buttons.

Usage:

Actions and information in the contextInfo pop-up dialog should be grouped according to usage.
A pop-up dialog should be as small as possible to avoid clutter; it should take up no more than one-quarter of a page.
The pop-up dialog should not contain editable widgets, because there is no way to undo or explicitly commit changes.

Actions in the pop-up dialog may:

Take users to a different point in the current work area.
Take users to a different work area.
Open another pop-up.
Open another browser window.

Launching, navigating, nesting, and moving from the pop-up dialog should comply with existing dialog guidelines. See Secondary Windows guideline for more information.