I am puzzled by the styling of TButtons that have Default:=True. The issue is that at least with some styles (Luna, for example), the most recently focused button is highlighted orange, which is the same styling used for a default button. As a result, I am concerned that users might be confused as to which button is the default or will at least think it odd that two buttons are highlighted. This behavior can be seen in XE7 (and according to a comment, also in XE8).
Questions:
Is this considered a modern way (relatively to unstyled VCL) to present default buttons?
If this is not considered standard behavior I can work around it in my own dialogs by strategically enabling/disabling the default button, but I was wondering whether I missed some setting that controls the relation between default buttons and the most-recently focused button. Is there a setting that controls this?
I suspect that this is a VCL styles bug. Create a default VCL application that uses the standard OS theme. Then add two buttons and an edit control. Make one of the buttons be the default button.
Now use the tab key to cycle round the focus. When the edit control has the focus, the default button is highlighted. That indicates that if you press ENTER then that button will be pressed.
However, if either of the buttons has the focus, then the button with the focus is highlighted. That's because if you press ENTER when a button has the focus, the focused button is pressed, irrespective of whether it is the default button.
The rules are as follows:
If a button has the focus, it is highlighted as the default button.
If a control other than a button has the focus, the default button, if there is one, is highlighted.
So, here's what the application looks like in XE7 with the system theme. The non-default button has the focus.
Note that only one button is highlighted, and it is not the default button.
And here is the same application in XE7 with the Luna style.
Here we have the default button, and the button with the focus, both being highlighted. I would regard that to be a bug, and it should be reported.
Related
I have a form with a speedbutton linked to a TMultiView component.
On the multiview I have some buttons. When clicking on any of the buttons I want the multiview to close and depending on the clicked button, different functions to be called. I have tried to set the Visible property of my MultiView to false, but the shadow over the form then remains. If I click on the speedbutton again, then menu disappears, and also the shadow, as expected.
Is there a way to solve this?
I'm using Deplhi XE 8.1
Multiview.HideMaster will close the multi view. Call this whenever/wherever you want the multiview to close.
I want to achieve the same effect as in Visual Studio 2010+, where if you float an editor on top of the main form, clicking on a main form menu or toolbar button doesn't cause the main form to steal focus; instead the floating window retains focus.
Without this it becomes impossible to invoke any main menu command that operates on a focused control when the focused control is in a floating window - because the control you wanted to operate on loses focus just as the command is invoked.
(Ironically, if you look closely at this image you'll see that the selection in the editor is muted, indicating that the editor control doesn't have focus. Visual Studio seems to be doing something slightly devious to achieve the illusion that the floating window is still focused.)
The solution is very easy if you are using TActionMainMenuBar and TActionToolBar.
First the menu bar: TActionMainMenuBar has a property AutoFocus, which is True by default. Set this to False and then clicking on the menu won't automatically give focus to the form containing the menu. Instead, the form that previously had focus will retain it.
Now the tool bar: TActionToolBar doesn't have an AutoFocus property. Instead you need to handle its OnMouseActivate event and return maNoActivate.
Note that returning maNoActivate from an OnMouseActivate handler doesn't work for all controls. Some controls such as TButton will give themselves the focus when clicked regardless of the return result from the OnMouseActivate handler. But in the case of TActionToolBar we do get the effect we are after.
It took me a while to find this though, and even searching Google for a page containing both 'AutoFocus' and 'OnMouseActivate' elicits no useful results (other than, presumably, this page once it gets indexed). So I hope this answer will help someone else.
I created a form in Delphi.
Say I have a Form with a speedbutton with label "&Add" (underline A, as a keyboard shortcut), and a dbgrid (read-only state) (or other control like TButton).
Then I changed the focus to Dbgrid (dbgrid got a focus) (or to TButton).
Every time I press the a key on the dbgrid, the onClick method on the speedbutton triggers.
Sometime I need to disable it for a while for a reason, and then i enable it again.
How to disable the speedbutton shortcut?
And then how to enable it again?
The form is pressing the button when you press A because the button has expressed interest in that key, and nothing else on your form is accepting keystrokes. If you had an edit box on your form, and it had the input focus, then the button would not be triggered.
You can make a control indicate that it wants to receive keystrokes when it has the focus, but that generally happens when writing a custom control, where you have some idea of what the new control class should do when it receives keyboard input.
If you don't want the button to be triggered, you can disable it. Another option is to alter the OnClick event handler to check other conditions (such as whether the grid has focus) before performing the usual click-handling code.
You could disable the shortcut by changing the speed button's label from &Add to Add. Change it back when you need to enable the shortcut again.
Please note that specifying an accelerator character like that enables two shortcuts, one is just the key prefaced with the & and the other the same key with Alt. So, in your case they would be A and Alt+A. In the same way, eliminating the accelerator disables both shortcuts. So, keep in mind that with this method of disabling the shortcut you would be unable to trigger the button neither with A nor with Alt+A.
In jQuery-UI dialog box, the first button appears to be the default, therefore having focus set to itself.
But, this causes a frustrating effect, especially in Safari. Even in IE, you will see a rectangular selection mark around the button. Moreover, the hover effect will not be seen.
How can I set NONE of these buttons as default and therefore NOT having focus set on any of them?
Edit:
Examples can be seen at jqueryui demo pages and a snapshot using Safari is below.
I want to get rid of this blue selection.
I think it could be an css-class, that turns the button to "default".
Check with the Firebug Element Inspector what classes are applied to these buttons, and append the standard css class to all buttons of the form.
How do I set a TSpeedButton (on a TToolbar) to look pressed down? It's only highlighted when clicking but gets normal when the mouse leaves it. I set the property Stayspressed to True and indeed the property IsPressed becomes and stays True, but this state is not visible.
What style are you using? Some of the included ones do not have every effect included.
First, revert back to the windows style. If that works, then it's definitely a styling issue, rather than a code issue.
If you want to add an effect (actually an animation) to another style:
Right click on a button and select Edit Default Style.
Find the Fill.Color property of the Rectangle you want to show the anmimation.
Click the animation icon and add a TColorAnimation
Set: the StartValue (the existing value).
The StopValue
The Trigger: IsPressed=True
Repeat the above to add a second animation with the Start and StopValues reversed and Trigger of IsPressed=False
This is a tough one - the standard TButton style includes effects which work - the button will look pressed when "IsPressed" is true. However, other styles (and especially your own) can be much more problematic. I have found the best solution is to have 2 styles and change the style when the button is pressed.
I found it pretty impossible to get "mouseover" animation to work with "pressed" animation in buttons - normally you want to highlight the button slightly when the mouse passes over and then add an effect when you press - especially when you don't want the default shadow effect but a colour effect (which I prefer, I don't like the inner shadow effect of a default button press), but I always seemed to end up with issues. Either one effect wouldn't fire OR the button state wouldn't return to what you'd expect (visually I mean).
My advice - add a little bit of extra code to change the style for the pressed button, you might go mad otherwise :-)