“No matter how far down the wrong road you have gone, turn back.”
— Turkish Proverb
I love making parts. That’s pretty much what I do. But even more than that, I love finding parts. If I can locate the part that I need, then I don’t have to build it, and even more important, I don’t have to maintain it. Nothing lasts forever, and all parts require periodic maintenance at one point or another, if for no other reason that to keep pace with an ever changing world. Even if I have already created a part for a particular purpose, if I can find a viable replacement, then I will gladly discard my own creation in favor of an acceptable newly released component or third-party alternative.
In fact, it doesn’t even have to be new — ServiceNow is so chock full of valuable gems that it would be impossible for any single individual to know and understand what’s under every rock in every corner of every room. I find stuff all of the time that I had no idea had been in there all along. And when I find an out-of-the-box doodad that can replace some custom-crafted gizmo that I built because I didn’t know any better, I will gladly toss aside my own creation to embrace what the product has to offer.
Not too long ago, I was pretty proud of myself for coming up with a way to display Portal Pages in a modal pop-up on a UI Page. That was pretty cool at the time, but what is even better is to find out that I never had to go to all of the trouble. My way of doing it looked like this:
var dialog = new GlideDialogWindow("portal_page_container");
dialog.setPreference('url', '/path/to/my/widget');
dialog.render();
… and it required a component that I had built for just that purpose, the portal_page_container. That worked, which is always import. However, there is a better way: using a built-in component that will essentially accomplish the same thing without the need for the extra home-made parts. Instead of a GlideDialogWindow, the trick is to use a GlideOverlay:
var go = new GlideOverlay({
title: 'Title of My Widget',
iframe : '/path/to/my/widget',
closeOnEscape : true,
showClose : true,
height : "90%",
width : "90%"
});
go.center();
go.render();
Now I can pitch that portal_page_container into the trash. It served its purpose honorably, but when things are no longer needed, it’s time to let go and move on!
