APEX 21.1 has a several awesome new features that steal the spotlight: Native Map Region Type, improved application Data Loading, and Faceted Search enhancements to list a few. But don’t overlook the subtle but important change in client side validations:

New Look

Client-Side validations now LOOK LIKE server side validations:

Where they used to look like this, with the familiar Correct errors before saving popup:

Good News

This is *great* for your end users – all validation now look the same, you never have to explain to end users why they may get that “Correct errors …” popup. This is great for developers, you never have to do the extra coding to make the client-side validations look like the server-side validations – if you chose to go that extra step (I suspect many of us picky developers did).

UNLESS you have end users who are used to seeing that “correct errors before ..” popup. Now they will not see that popup, they will see the perhaps more alarming golden error popup, the same error popup as for server side validation errors.

Tell Your Users

This is different. Your end users should be told to expect this difference.

If you are upgrading to 21.1 from earlier APEX versions, and if your end users are used to seeing the client side validations the old way, please let them know of this upcoming change!

What If You Did This Already?

While all told this is a good thing – if you are a developer like me who has (already) done the apex.message coding to make your client side validation messages look like your server side validation messages, no worries:

a) You don’t need to do this anymore, and

b) Your existing code will work fine – you will not see double error messages.

While you may eventually want to take that apex.message code out, it does not hurt anything to leave it there.

Hope this saves someone a call or two,

Happy coding!