In the beginning (or soon after) there was Component View. Then in APEX 5.0 we added Page Designer but left Component View around because it had some die hard fans and “just in case”.
Many speculated on what the ultimate fate of Component View would be. Now in 5.1 a new Component View tab has been added to Page Designer and the original Component View is re-dubbed Legacy Component View. Legacy Component view is disabled by default. To enable it go to Account Menu Preferences and set Enable Legacy Component View to Yes. Once you enable it you can find the link to it on the new Component View tab in Page Designer. Most importantly Legacy Component View is deprecated. The Release notes say:
Component View has been designated as a legacy user interface for editing application pages. Oracle recommends developers use Page Designer instead of Legacy Component View. …
So it will likely be removed completely in a future release. Already in 5.1 there are a number of new components like JET Charts and Interactive Grids that can’t be edited with Legacy Component View. Its just too much work to keep both Page Designer and legacy component edit pages up to date and in sync.
The Component View tab provides the familiar page organization of Legacy Component View with the editing efficiency of Page Designer. For people used to Component View we think it is the best of both worlds.
So Component View is dead, long live Component View!
Some may say “Whats the big deal with the new Component View tab? I’ve already moved on and this new tab just gets in my way”. For those people I have a little secret to share (its totally unsupported and it may not work in the future). You can remove the Component View tab from Page Designer by navigating to Page Designer then opening the browser’s console window and typing in the following code:
$("#componentView,[aria-controls='componentView']").remove();pageDesigner.storeTabsLayout();
This is per user and will persist after you log out. To get it back again from Page Designer open the Settings menu and choose Reset Layout and then refresh the page. Refreshing the page is important because just resetting the layout alone won’t bring it back.
Don’t try this with other tabs.
I hope you enjoy this little trick and enjoy APEX 5.1