The most customizable aspect of the user interface your application delivers is the one provided by Salesforce through its highly customizable layout editor that provides the ability to customize the standard user interface pages (including those now delivered via the mobile client Salesforce1) used to list, create, edit, and delete records.
Lightning Experience is the latest user interface experience available for your desktop users. Salesforce Classic or Aloha is the name given to the existing user interface. Its radically different both in appearance and technology. Fortunately, your existing investments in layouts and Visualforce are still compatible. Lightning however does bring with it a more component driven aspect and with it new tools to that allow even greater customization of the overall user experience.
Keep in mind any user experience you deliver that is not leveraging the standard user interface takes added effort on behalf of the developer typically utilizing Custom Settings and Fieldsets to provide customization facilities. Visualforce pages or Lightning components can be used to customize parts of or completely replace the standard user interface. This will be covered in more detail in Chapter 8, User Interface.
Tip
It is worth noting that subscriber org administrators can modify the page overrides defined and packaged on your Custom Objects to re-enable the Salesforce standard user interface instead of using your packaged Visualforce page. As such, it's worth keeping in mind giving some aesthetic attention to all your Custom Object layouts. Also, note that action overrides and layout components do not get upgraded.
The following is a brief summary of the customization features available beyond the standard sections and field ordering. These allow you to add graphs and custom UIs that help combine the layout customization with the flexibility and power of Visualforce:
- Visualforce: Layout sections allow you to embed a Visualforce page using the Standard Controllers. While this is only supported on the standard view pages, you are able to do whatever you wish on the Visualforce page itself.
- Report charts: Recently, the ability to embed a report chart into a layout has been added to the platform. This is a powerful feature to enhance the information provided to the user using a parameterized report.
- Actions: This allows you to describe, either declaratively or programmatically, additional actions beyond the standard platform actions. They are only applicable if you have enabled Chatter for the object.
- Custom Buttons: Much like actions, this allows additional buttons on the detail and list view pages to invoke application specific functionality. Creating Custom Buttons and hooking them up to your Apex code is covered in Chapter 8, User Interface.
When you are considering building dedicated or even embedded (within layouts) Visualforce pages, always give consideration to end users who want to extend the layout and/or tables on the page with their own custom fields. Fieldsets offer the best means to achieve this; a later chapter will go into this in more detail.
Lightning App Builder (available under the Setup menu) can be used by users in the subscriber org to customize the user experience of Salesforce Mobile and Lightning Experience. This tool allows users to build brand new pages using a drag and drop tool as well as to customize existing Lightning Experience pages provided by Salesforce such as the Home page and Record Detail pages.
Lightning Components are the fundamental building blocks that determine what information and functionality is available in Salesforce Mobile and Lightning Experience user experiences. Some standard components are provided by Salesforce and can also be built by other developers, as well as included in your package to expose your functionality. In a later chapter will be taking a deeper look at the architecture of Lightning and how that effects how you deliver functionality in your application.