Optional Forecasted Dates and
Bar
Now in addition to the planned and actual dates and timeline bars, you can
provide a set of "forecasted" task dates and display the corresponding
timeline bar. This forecasted date is typically used in a project
timeline when an original planned task slips or starts early. For
example, when you originally plan your project you set planned start and end
dates for each task. During the progression of the project some tasks
may not actually begin or end according to the plan, but you don't want to
change the planned timeline -- you want to keep those dates as a baseline.
That's when the forecasted dates come in. You set those dates to the new
start and end times for the task, leaving the original planned dates as-is.
Note that implementation of this functionality has caused the structure of the wgDataArray to change. Additionally you
may want to check out the wgForecastColor
and wgForecastImage properties that let you
format the forecasted timeline bars. One more note -- the wgShowBars property has been
slightly modified to support the new forecasted timeline bar.
Chart styles and formatting
Defining styles for the chart has completely changed. You now set styles
for the header and task rows using a single property (wgHeaderStyle
and wgTaskStyle) instead of the old
wgFontName, wgFontSize, etc properties. The values
for these new properties utilize Cascading Style Sheet (CSS) attributes,
giving you tremendous flexibility for the style of your charts.
Additionally, the wgTaskPercentStyle
property allows you to format the percentage complete values displayed in the
chart. Finally, do you want the background area behind the task bars to
appear different than the background area behind the other task information?
If so, use the wgPlotStyle to set
the task bar background to the color, image, or other style you chose!
Improved International
Support
Version 3.2 includes better processing capability for international date
formats. Previously certain non-US date formats caused WebGantt© to
report errors, even if the wgDateFormat
property was properly set to "D/M/Y". Now the internal date conversion
has been improved to be much more reliable. Additionally, there is now a wgDateDelimiter property that
lets you specify the character used to delimit the various parts of the date
values. Previously you were limited to a forward slash ("/"). Now
you can specify any character to delimit your date and provides dates in
formats like "1-15-2004" and "25.12.2004".
Increased hyperlink support
In previous versions of WebGantt, a single hyperlink could be provided for
each task by passing a hyperlink as an element of the
wgDataArray property. Because
that property has been reworked in v4.0 to support the forecasted dates, the
hyperlinks for tasks have been given their own properties. You can now
provide five different hyperlinks for each task -- a link for the task ID, one
for the task name, one for the planned dates,
one for the forecasted dates, and one for the actual dates. Do this by
setting the wgIdLinks,
wgTaskLinks, wgPlannedLinks,
wgActualLinks, and
wgForecastLinks properties.
Additionally, the new wgTargetDelimiter
property allows you to specify what character in hyperlink strings delimits
the URL and the target for displaying the URL.
Chart Header and Footer
These two new properties give you the ability to specify a header and footer
for the chart. You can apply whatever formatting you'd like to the
contents that you put in the values. See
wgChartHeader and
wgChartFooter for details.
Miscellaneous changes
Because the
wgDataArray property has been reworked in v3.2 to support the
forecasted dates, the percentage complete for each task has been removed from
wgDataArray and given its own
property. You now use the wgPercentComplete
property to optionally specify the percent complete for each task.
The wgColumnWidth,
wgColumnHeading, and
wgColumnAlign properties have
been resized from a six-position array (index 0 to 5) to an eight-position
array (index 0 to 7). This matches up with the number of elements for
each item in the wgDataArray
property, allowing the width, heading and alignment of the forecasted start
and end dates to be formatted.
In previous versions of WebGantt, the milestone
character was set to a small diamond character using the Windows "Wingdings"
font. However, on some browsers and operating systems this character did
not show property. To avoid this problem, a
wgMilestoneChar property is now
available for the user to set his/her own milestone character. By
default it'll be set to the same small diamond, but the user can specify any
character and any style setting to use for displaying milestone tasks.
For current users of WebGantt©, you can upgrade to version 4.0 at NO COST! However, your current registration code will NOT work with version 4.0. To request an updated registration code, please send an email to support@thepcsweb.com requesting a new code. Send your current code plus the email address you used to register WebGantt in this email so we can confirm your registration.
Display days in addition to
months
With WebGantt 3.0 you can now show timelines in days. This
allows you much greater flexibility in displaying your project information.
You can even start the first month's display in the middle of the month if
you'd like.
International Support
WebGantt now allows dates to be specified in the day/month/year
format as well as the original month/day/year format. Use the wgDateFormat parameter to set your date style. In addition, using the
wgColumnHeading and wgMonthName parameters, you can set the chart's labels to whatever
language you desire!
Align Columns
Previous versions had fixed column alignment for the task ID,
task name, and date columns. Now you can set your own alignment using the
wgColumnAlign parameter.
ToolTip date displays
Specify the wgOnHover parameter to have WebGantt display the start or end dates
whenever you hold the mouse cursor over a task bar.
ActiveX DLL version dropped
With version 3.0 we have decided to drop our ActiveX DLL
version. Our customer feedback indicated that the vast majority of users
were using the ASP module, and to cut costs of maintaining two code bases,
we decided to focus our efforts on the ASP version.
Bug Fix: ColumnWidth for
planned start and end
In previous versions, if you tried to set the column width of the planned
start and end dates (columns 2 and 3) to zero, the chart defaulted to the
width of 60. In effect, there was no way to hide those columns. This has
been fixed in version 3.0.
Dynamically set your
project timeline
Previous versions of WebGantt© were limited to only showing a
12-month timeline. Well, not anymore! WebGantt© can now show 2,
3, 4, and 6-month timelines in addition to the 12-month view. See the
wgChartMonths property for details.
Hyperlink to another web
page when task bars are clicked
Wouldn't it be nice to open another web page (maybe one that
contains details about the task) when a timeline bar is clicked? Well,
with version 2.0 you can do just that. Now, when building the task
array or task collection, you can optionally specify a hyperlink URL (and
target).
Change those column
headings please...
The default column headings provided by WebGantt© were
pretty straightforward -- ID, TASK NAME, PLAN START, PLAN END, ACTUAL START,
and ACTUAL END. But what if your projects calls for different labels?
Version 2.0 to the rescue! You can now specify your own column labels using
the wgColumnHeading property. Set each label independently, or just set
some and let the others remain the default. Very flexible!
Planned, Actual or Both?
Earlier versions of WebGantt showed both the planned and actual
timelines all the time. But what if you are just in the planning phase and
don't have actuals? Or what if your boss just wants the actual timeline?
Well, version 2.0 now offers you some flexibility. Using the wgShowBars property you can tell the chart to only display your planned
timeline, only your actual timeline, or both timelines.
What year is it?
WebGantt© has always showed you the months that make
up your project timeline, but what about the year? When you spanned
multiple years with your timeline (such as the government fiscal year --
October through September), you just had to know the first and second years;
there was no way for WebGantt© to show them. Well version 2.0
fixes that. Now you can use the wgShowYear property to display a 2- or 4-digit year along with your
months.
An image is worth a
thousand solid colors...
Well, OK, that's a bit corny... but it's true. Sometimes showing
plain solid colors doesn't present the effect you're trying to express.
With WebGantt© version 2.0, you're not limited to displaying the
timeline bars with a solid color anymore. You can now use the wgPlannedImage and
wgActualImage properties to set the bar backgrounds to a JPG or GIF
image instead of a solid color. Way cool!