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About Window Modality

A window can be either modeless or modal. A modal window (often a dialog) requires the end user to respond before continuing to work in the current application. A modeless window requires no such response. When you create a window, you specify its modality by setting the Modal property to Yes or No. The default is No (modeless).

Modeless Windows

You can display multiple modeless windows at the same time, and end users can navigate freely among them (provided your application logic allows it). On most GUI platforms, you can layer modeless windows so that they appear either in front of or behind other windows.

Modeless windows remain displayed until they are dismissed by the end user or hidden programmatically. You can set the Hide on Exit property for a modeless window to specify whether it should remain displayed when the end user navigates to another window. You also can set the properties of a modeless window to specify its border and title, and whether end users should be allowed to scroll, resize, move, close, iconify, and zoom the window.

Modal Windows

Modal windows are usually used as dialogs, and have restricted functionality compared to modeless windows. On some platforms, for example, end users cannot resize, scroll, or iconify a modal window. Modal windows are often displayed with a platform-specific border unique to modal windows. On some platforms, modal windows are "always-on-top" windows that cannot be layered behind modeless windows.

In addition to platform-specific restrictions, modal windows have the following characteristics:

System-level vs. Application-level Modality

On some platforms, modal windows are modal only with respect to other windows in the same application. That is, when Oracle Forms displays a modal window, the end user is still allowed to work in windows owned by other applications.

On other platforms, modal windows are modal with respect to the entire system, and must be dismissed before end users can send input to windows that belong to other applications.


About modal dialog windows

Hide on Exit property