posted 12 years ago
You have named it correctly. It's a modal panel and not a modal dialog and that means that the panel variables aren't setup and used when the panel is displayed. they're set up when the page containing (or including) the panel is displayed.
That's probably the root of your problem. I'm not quite sure of the exact issue you're having, since you haven't provided enough details. But, going the other direction, a panel is (must be) in a form, and the form is in its containing view (which is why the panel definition has to be outside of any background forms, since forms can't be nested). To update the backing bean, that form has to be submitted, and the only way to submit without re-rendering the dialog's containing page is to do an AJAX submit of the panel's from.
A bit trickier than "real" dialog boxes, alas.
The secret of how to be miserable is to constantly expect things are going to happen the way that they are "supposed" to happen.
You can have faith, which carries the understanding that you may be disappointed. Then there's being a willfully-blind idiot, which virtually guarantees it.