New Xrm.Utility Functions in Update Rollup 8

Apparently roll up 8 brought along with it 2 new client side Xrm.Utility scripting functions along with it. These functions are described in the MSDN blog posting.

The openEntityForm function seems interesting and would seem to replace the standard javascript "window.open" function specifically as it relates to opening CRM entity forms. So something that could have been previously achieved with the likes of this script:

window.open(Xrm.Page.context.getServerUrl() +
 "/sfa/conts/edit.aspx?id=" + Xrm.Page.getAttribute("primarycontactid").getValue()[0].id,
"MyWindow",
"toolbar=0,resizable=1,width=screen.width,height=screen.height");

Can now be achieved with a simpler and presumably cleaner (in terms of user experience):

Xrm.Utility.openEntityForm("contact", Xrm.Page.getAttribute("primarycontactid").getValue());

The more interesting aspect of this command is the ability to pass parameters when opening the form (probably more apropo to the create form). This probably lends itself to creating a "clone" action for every CRM form among other more obvious usages.

The second function (openWebResource) is less obvious in terms of its usefulness - at least to me at this juncture. Perhaps it can optimize the performance for opening a form by not having to specify all web resources in the form definition that the form might use during the course of its operation and you can then manually load a web resource in the jscript when it is necessary? I'd be interested to see what the various use cases for this script might be.

Time to experiment and find out...