Ack:- Sam Arjmandi

1. Force.com Sites Improvements
   • Audit Trail:
     Now you can track all the changes made to your sites by different users.
   • Sites Robot.txt and Fav Icon:
     With this release you will be able to set a robot.txt for you force.com site which enables you to better control how search engines should index your site’s pages. Fav Icon is also a useful way of personalizing the browser in showing an icon next to the title of your website (in tabs) and also in favorites/bookmarks.
   • Standard Pages:
     Allows you to bring selected standard pages and expose them to the public via your force.com site (suitable for ideas page, etc).
   • Sites Packaging:
     With this feature we can package force.com sites, apex code, etc and install them into other instances.
2. Force.com Web Service API Improvements
   • Improvements in the timeout limits of the callouts:
     This is potentially good when the code takes a longer time to process and bring back the results. Now we can configure it in a way to have extended timeout periods resulting in more run-time stability.
   • Also Wider range of WSDL types are supported by Spring 09 release.
3. Database and Reporting
   • Summary Report Data Snapshots:
     Previously data snapshots were available on reports, however, with this release you can use snapshots across large amounts of data, where only the summaries will be stored, as well as create historical views of metrics, KPIs and other summary data.
   • Data Grouping Functions:
     This is actually a very useful upgrade, now you can group the entries of a report to better analyze aggregate data.
   • Delegated Data Administration:
     This feature allows you to grant permission to non-admin users to report, search, modify, transfer, share, unlock, or approve any record regardless of sharing settings on an object basis.
   • Dashboard Finder:
     This enhancement allows you to search through your dashboard items (a real time-saver!).
4. Force.com IDE
   • Apex Code Auto-Complete in Force.com IDE:
     Finally! When you are coding in Eclipse (force.com IDE) auto-complete feature will be available to assist you with writing the code.
5. User Interface
   • Enhanced Page Layout Editor:
     This one is my favorite enhancement, using this feature now you can create much better layouts. You can drag and drop fields and items around, “save as” a layout, leave a spot empty (blank spaces), design the mini-layout, etc.
6. Services
   • Cross-Object Workflow:
     With this feature you can update a field on a parent record within a workflow!
   • Access to Email Logs in the Application:
     This report shows you whether your outbound emails were received or bounced back and basically gives you a comprehensive log of your outbound emails.

7. Force.com Logic
   • New Opportunity Save Behavior
     Visit the New Opportunity Save Behavior Salesforce wiki page for more information.

   
   

8. Mobile
   • Mobile Web Tabs for iPhone
     You can now create mobile-ready Visualforce Tabs for the iPhone. This enhances the client with a near-limitless method of extension – enabling you create content for the iPhone using the Visualforce user interface framework. The hybrid iPhone client that supports this functionality will be released next month.

Source : Salesforce Blog

Jesse Lorenz blogs following about how to use Visualforce and Apex to Populate PDF Forms

Does your company’s business process involve filling out PDF forms? Perhaps something like IRS Form W-4?

If so, you may be interested to learn that in addition to creating PDF documents from scratch, you can also use Visualforce and Apex to automate the process of populating third-party PDF forms. Ron Hess and I(Jesse Lorenz) recently collaborated on a project that does just that. It’s a straightforward process where all you really need to do is generate an XML file that follows Adobe’s XFDF format.

If you’re interested to learn more, we’ve documented an example that creates an XFDF file which is then used to populate a simple PDF form. Read the XFDF wiki article to learn more.

Many a times Visualforce page uses a number of outputLabels and selectLists to create the functionality below.

<apex:pageBlockSectionItem >
    <apex outputLabel value=”Category 1″ for=”cbxlevel1″/>
    <apex outputPanel styleClass=”requiredInput” layout=”block”>
    <apex outputPanel styleClass=”requiredBlock” layout=”block”/>

    <apex:selectList value=”{!selectedLevel1}” id=”cbxlevel1″ size=”1″ required=”true”>
        <apex:selectOptions value=”{!level1items}”/>
        <apex:actionSupport event=”onchange” rerender=”cbxlevel2″/>
    </apex:selectList>
    </apex outputPanel>

</apex:pageBlockSectionItem>

Setting the selectList’s required attribute makes the select’s value required but does not, by design, display the red bar next to the label. This is perfect is it does not lock developers into Salesforce.com’s look and feel. However, to actually display the required red bar, you have to add some extra code

Ack:- Jeff Douglas

helpText : The help text that is displayed next to this field as a hover-based tooltip, similar to the text that is displayed next to standard Salesforce fields if custom help is defined for the field in Setup.

Important thing to have a help bubble near to any of form fields is to use helptext
within <apex:pageblocksectionitem>

<br<br /> /><apex:page tabstyle=”Account” standardcontroller=”Account”><br /> <apex:sectionheader title=”Validation Test Page”><br /> </apex:sectionHeader><apex:form> <apex:pageblock<br /> title=”” id=”pageBlock”> <apex:pageblockbuttons<br /> location=”top”> <apex:pageblocksection columns=”1″><br /> <apex:pageblocksectionitem helptext=”Enter Account Name”><br /> <apex:outputlabel value=”Name : “></apex:outputLabel><br /> <apex:inputfield value=”{!Account.Name}”><br /> </apex:pageblocksectionitem> <apex:pageblocksectionitem<br /> helptext=”Enter Description here”> <apex:outputlabel<br /> value=”Description : “></apex:outputLabel> <apex:inputfield<br /> value=”{!Account.Description}”> </apex:pageblocksectionitem><br /> </apex:pageblocksection> <apex:commandbutton value=”Save”<br /> action=”{!save}”></apex:commandButton></apex:pageBlockButtons></apex:pageBlock></apex:form></apex:page><br<br /> /><br />

Note : Few Closing Tags may be missing due to HTML Code Conversion.

Ack : Visualforce Blogspot