Force.com Platform Fundamentals

Preface
Introducing the Force.com Platform
About the Sample Recruiting App
Reviewing Database Concepts
Building a Simple App
Enhancing the Simple App with Advanced Fields, Data Validation, and Page Layouts
Expanding the Simple App Using Relationships
Securing and Sharing Data
Collaborating with Chatter
Automating Business Processes
Analyzing Data with Reports and Dashboards
Moving Beyond Point-and-Click App Development
Introducing Mash-Ups and Web Services
Introducing Visualforce
Implementing the Candidate Map
Try It Out: Create a Visualforce Page
Try It Out: Write Visualforce Markup
Try It Out: Add the Map to Our Visualforce Page
Try It Out: Add the Candidate Map to Position Page Layouts
Try It Out: Enable the Candidate Map for Mobile
Try It Out: Test the Candidate Map
Implementing the Mass Update Status Button
Learning More
Glossary
PDF

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Try It Out: Create a Visualforce Page

Now that we're in development mode, let's create a Visualforce page called CandidateMap by simply modifying the URL in our browser.

Salesforce URLs typically look something like this: https://yourDomain.my.salesforce.com/001/o, where yourDomain is the name of your Salesforce custom domain. You can create a new Visualforce page by removing everything to the right of the .my.salesforce.com/ part of the URL and replacing it with apex/ followed by the name of the page you want to create.
  1. In the address bar of your browser, replace everything to the right of salesforce.com/ with apex/CandidateMap.

    Don't change anything to the left of salesforce.com/, as this information is specific to the instance of the Force.com platform that you're using, and changing it will prevent you from creating the Visualforce page.

    Warning

The resulting URL should look something like this: https://yourDomain.my.salesforce.com/apex/CandidateMap.

  1. Press Enter.

The following Visualforce error page appears indicating that the page doesn't exist yet. Again, that's okay—this gives us a chance to exercise one of the other handy features of development mode, the quick fix. A quick fix is a way of creating something on the fly, right when we need it. In this case, even though the CandidateMap page doesn't exist yet, development mode gives us a quick fix link to create it on the fly. Clicking the link is the equivalent of going to Setup, navigating to the Visualforce page section, clicking New, entering the name of the page, and clicking Save.

Visualforce Error Page A Visualforce error page stating, "PageCandidateMap does not exist."
  1. Click the Create Page CandidateMap link.
CandidateMap Visualforce Page The CandidateMap Visualforce page

Congratulations! You've created your first Visualforce page! Now it's time to add some Visualforce markup so it displays our candidate map.