References to components, parameters, and layout elements

First, I want to start by covering one important concept in CDF, and don't forget that concepts in CDF also extend to CDE. If you open the developer tools in your browser and start inspecting some CDE dashboard code, you will see that the names of the components are always prepended with render_ with the name of the components that we set when editing the dashboard. This way, when you want to refer to a component using its name, you should use the complete name of the component such as:

this.dashboard.getComponentByName('${c:myComponentName}');

This would be the same as:

this.dashboard.getComponentByName('render_myComponentName');

When you use this code line inside a dashboard, where it is not valid for code in external files, you can refer to the component as ${c:myComponentName}. This is possible because, when using this syntax, it will be translated and replaced by the full name of the component, so you don't need to worry about the...