I'm developing an application for the XBox using XNA, with a custom made UI framework.
For this I developed a navigation system, the navigation system works as followed:
The system exists of pages, each page contains child UI elements, which all have
one or more PageTabs as I called them.
The pagetabs are objects, having 2 properties, X and Y.
(I know I could have used Point, but the pagetab class has some methods also)
Based on the current state of the system, I check for input, and I raise events on elements with the right pagetab.
So I have this array:
pages[]{
Start,
Exit,
Settings,
...}
Then, I use an enum for my state, like Start, and access the page navigatable elements like this:
pages[Start].Navigatables[]
This is an array containing all the pagetabs of the page. When you go down, Y gets increased, and vice versa. Same for X
This works great, it keeps the max & min Y&X values in mind, so something always get selected.
However, this system has one major flaw, it can only box input for 1 state.
But say I am for example on the start page,
so my state is Start, and I have a popup, with 2 buttons, pagetabs:
(1,1) & (2,1)
The system as it currently is designed, will look for ALL elements in the current state with the selected pagetab, but I need to make it so that if the popup is visible, only the popup accepts navigation, and everything else won't react to user input (gamepad).
I was thinking of adding an extra List to the PageTab class, which contains 'substates' on which the element may accept input, but there must be a better way, ain't there?
I hope I explained it good enough, if you need more info I'll be glad to provide it.
I'd suggest using some kind of flag in your system, so that when you have a pop-up active. it marks all other elements as disabled. then when you close the pop-up you re-enable the other elements. you can check this flag when passing input to the elements so that you only send it to enabled elements.
I went with the extra Z-index approach.
Using a different Z-index for some elements and catching this input works like a charm.
I also added a flag: IndependentNavigation, which makes sure some elements are Z-index-independent (so one could click somewhere different when a dropdown is opened for example)
Related
I'm trying to activate Hint from control of different application created from delphi upon focus, I'm using hook to identify the focused control, and then use WM_MOUSEMOVE, which I think will activate the Hint of that control, the handle would be the Control itself and the lParam is the Left and Top of the Control. The Control activate the OnMouseMove Event, but the Hint never shows. but when I use SetCursorPos, Hint show, but I need to show the Hint with out the cursor move on that Control. Can you please help me with this? Thank you in advance... by the way I'm using Delphi XE4
Among the really asked question is how to show the hint of a control that resides on another application (i am afraid without hook that application can not be done), the title is "Delphi - Activating the Hint from another control of Application".
First is first: That can be done without knowing what language the other app was done, but it is very complex to put it here (and i am not an expert on such way of coding, also i hate apps that work that way).
Second: The main idea is to hook the other application, search on Google some code of that apps, that can show you a rectangular hole square of the object the mouse is passing over, that application while doing it is iconized (i do not remember the name of it).
Waht such app does: As you move the mouse over the screen it overlays a rectangular over the control that mouse is over, then if you press the key to print screen, that small region is the only thing that goes to clipboard; on of such apps i saw had an extra funcion, they can move such controls if you press cursors on keyboard, also can hide/enable/disable such control... more, it can also make controls that are invisible to be visible, etc... i saw it working on my computer, and hey, for fun it is pretty and to DeBug or get extra things on some apps is also great (make some menús to be visible and enabled and then can use such funtions).
Please, please, understand i am agaist piracy and also against using such apps to let code to be run... some apps need pay for letting some menus enabled, but they have the code there, no need to change EXE to have/use that menus; just using this kind of apps makes that limited apps to be unlimited (just enable or show hidden menus and voila).
Note: To unhide menus, mouse point is not needed to be over the app, can be anywhere and is not moved.
The idea i want to say is: Any app can move, alter any control on any other app (at least on Windows) that is running, so maybe there can be a way to show such hint.
In the past i had use such app (sorry i do not remember the name) for DeBug my own apps, so i do not need to recompile in such cases where something was wrongly hidden, also work with buttons, labels, texts, combos, memos, etc.
Now my small problem is: I just need exactly what title say, but i can not make it to work.
Must be:
Mouse position must be irrelevant (it also must be able to be outside the application)
Just when a button that has focus is pressed with keyboard (Space or Enter) or just after some code somewhere on my application, i want to show the Hint of a specific TEdit for a short period of time.
I did not get Hint to be shown; not unless mouse point is over such TEdit but i want/need mouse pointer to not be over it, neither it to jump to the TEdit.
Idea Conept for that Hint to be shown: After doing some code that changes something, show extra info associated.
Example:
A button with that loads a file using an open dialog, filename is put on a ReadOnly TEdit (so it let user copy the text, but not change it); i want extra info that i punt on .Hint of such TEdit to be shown inmediatly.
That hint use is for not overload window with a lot of fields (TLabels) for showing such file data.
Simple idea: such Hint shows TimeStamp and size of the selected file.
P.D.: Not much related (since i am trying with a normal plain text hint), but hints can also store a full HTML page and with 3rd party tools be shown as an HTMLhint, so they can show a lot info of that file (also its content, etc) in a web based format; as i say i first try with standard plain text hints.
In order to show hint programatically you need to call TApplications ActivateHint method to which you specify the position parameter.
http://docwiki.embarcadero.com/Libraries/XE3/en/Vcl.Forms.TApplication.ActivateHint
Based on position parameter Application automatically finds which controll is at that position and shows its hint.
NOTE: Position parameter screen coordinates in pixels and not your controll coordinates. So you will have to use ClientToScreen method to change your coordinates apropriately.
You can see simple example of how to use this here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/15031208/3636228
Now if you need to do this from another application then you will have to add some comunication mechanizm to these two application so that one could send a proper message to tell the other to show the hint at specific position. But this does require you to be able to change both applications.
EDIT: This works with VCL applications but I'm not sure if it would work with FireMonkey applications.
I made my GUI using Qt Designer and I have a QTabWidget with multiple tabs. My tabs contain specific tools that are used in my app. Now I would like to set my tabs closable and movable so I could save the order of my tabs and load it when the app starts. The problem is, I don't know how to reorder my tabs when the application loads. Is this possible?
You can move tabs by accessing the QTabBar object associated with the QTabQidget
QTabBar has a method moveTab() which will allow you to reorder tabs.
So you would do something like my_tab_widget.tabBar().moveTab(old_position, new_position) where old_position and new_position are integers which specify the tab to move and the position to move it to respectively.
Lots of details in the c++ documentation (it translates to python pretty easily). See QTabBar docs and QTabWidget docs
I have a blackberry application in which I want to use pointer navigation, just like the browser field, however I do not want to use a browserfield. On the surface it seems like it would be simple however I am having trouble finding out how to do this.
The BlackBerry standard interface does not provide a pointer. Focus moves from one input UI element to the next depending on the navigation interface which could be 1 dimensional (scroll wheel), 2 dimensional, or multi-touch.
If you want to provide a pointer based navigation model you will have to write your own UI toolkit.
Windows in my application are popping up off the edge of the screen, and this of course is a problem because some of the windows are modal and can't be dismissed (you don't even know they are there).
I'm using the TurboPower Orpheus component which remembers the location and size of each form, then restores it when the form is shown again. It saves the size and placement in an INI file.
What can I do to prevent windows from ever showing off the side of the screen?
It's common for this sort of thing to happen if you use multiple monitors and then disconnect one, such as when undocking a laptop. Or if you dock a laptop to a screen with a higher resolution. Or use remote desktop, etc..
The remedy is to override the "remember my position" behavior with a sanity check, to see if the left+width exceeds the width of the screen (Screen.Monitors array, actually - thanks guys), and vice-versa for the top+height.
Ideally, you "bump" by subtracting the difference, so you're butting up against the edge that the window wanted to straddle.
Also, see if there are updates to Orpheus that fix this. If not, you can get the source, make the correction (optional), and contribute it back to the project. It's OSS, as I recall.
You may want to give a look at their DefaultMonitor property and read the code from TCustomForm.SetWindowToMonitor to see how to deal with positioning relatively to Screen.Monitors.
Use DefaultMonitor to associate a form with a particular monitor in a multi-monitor application. The following table lists the possible values:
Value Meaning
dmDesktop No attempt is made to position the form on a specific monitor.
dmPrimary The form is positioned on the first monitor listed in the global screen object's Monitors property.
dmMainForm The form appears on the same monitor as the application's main form.
dmActiveForm The form appears on the same monitor as the currently active form.
Note: DefaultMonitor has no effect if the application does not have a main form.
To recall the previous position of a form, without having it suddenly in an area which is no longer available (due to a plugged off screen or changed resolution), you just call
TForm.MakeFullyVisible;
That's it. See the documentation.
Question:
Can anyone point to an article or code samples anywhere on how to
provide BOTH editing AND range selection in a TStringGrid?
Yes, I KNOW there are third-party grids that do this, but it's
frustrating that the built-in grid lacks this basic capability.
Background:
It's pretty normal to expect to be able to both edit a cell in a grid,
and also to select a range of cells such as for a Copy operation.
As delivered, TStringGrid doesn't do that. It's either/or. In fact, the
docs tell us about the grid Options, "When goEditing is included in
Options, goRangeSelect has no effect".
However, it looks like it may be possible to do editing and rangeselects
in a TStringGrid anyway!!! Through careful use of the mousedown,
mouseup, selectcell and exit events, you can get dang close by switching
editing elements on and off at the right times. But I still don't have
it perfect, and that only covers mouse use, not keyboard changes.
I have not used the TStringGrid for this, so I can't provide a specific answer. But am I right in assuming you can manually (in code) start a cell being edited? That link implies it is possible even if the grid doesn't have goEditing included in its Options. (See below to work around this if this is not true.)
If so, I'd suggest the following approach:
Combined selection and edit behaviour
I find this is a good, Windows-standard-behaviour sort of approach:
Leave the grid in selection mode, so mouse and keyboard interaction selects cells
Trigger a cell being edited yourself, based on certain criteria (I think you are on the way to doing this from what you said in your last paragraph.) There are common ways to trigger editing, and the following criteria are what my programs follow when they do something similar with other controls:
Selection is normal. Ie, click to select, click and drag to multi-select, use the keyboard arrows and Shift or Control to select, etc.
A cell enters edit mode when either:
A cell is selected and the user presses Enter or F2 (F2 is the standard "Rename" or "Edit" shortcut, which works in a number of programs)
The user "slow-double-clicks" on a cell - ie, slow-double-clicks to select and edit, or clicks again, after a pause, on an already-selected cell. This mimics Explorer's behaviour, where if a file is selected and you later click on it, it enters the inline edit/rename mode. To implement this, record when a cell was last clicked (and selected.) If it is clicked again, and if the time is greater than GetDoubleClickTime then they have clicked twice, slowly, and enter edit mode. This allows you to distinguish between the first click to select, a double-click (to perform some kind of action), and a slow second click, to enter edit mode.
I also tend to check the mouse position, so that if an object is slow-double-clicked and it wasn't first selected (ie, this both selects the object and then enters edit mode) I verify the mouse hasn't moved very much. I use GetSystemMetrics to find the double-click distance, and check that the slow double click was within this box. (Because it's not a true doubleclick, I actually check the distance times 2. My action code is:
const int iMAX_MOVE_AMOUNT = ::GetSystemMetrics(SM_CYDOUBLECLK) * 2; (sorry, C++ not Delphi, but should be convertable easily enough!)
but I'm actually not certain if this is completely and utterly 100% to Windows guidelines. In practice users find it works as they expect, though.)
That should let you change between selecting and editing at the appropriate times with both the keyboard and the mouse.
Miscellaneous thoughts
You may find some of this is cleaner and easier to implement by subclassing TStringGrid and creating a new component. That will allow you to implement this in normal code and override the inbuilt behaviour (rather than event handlers) while keeping it invisible to the form code. It will also give you lower-level access to the mouse events or Windows messages than are exposed simply through events such as OnMouseDown. Finally, if there are problems with showing the editor when goEditing is included in Options, this will allow you to change that behaviour. You could also add your own events if you want your code to respond to certain things happening, such as creating an OnBeginEdit event, say.
Creating your own components is normally regarded as an advanced Delphi topic, but it's actually remarkably easy once you know how! This site has a few good topics that will introduce you to the subject in general, and if you go this route and encounter problems, Stack Overflow is of course a good place to ask questions :) The Embarcadero Delphi » VCL » Writing Components newsgroup / forum is also an excellent resource, in fact possibly even better than SO for this specific topic.
Hope that helps!
Yes it's old post, but the problem still exist on Delphi XE3.
To manage this feature I used next "trick" in SelectCell procedure :
if (ARow = StringGridParam.Row) then
begin
StringGridParam.Options:= StringGridParam.Options + [goEditing] - [goRowSelect];
end else begin
StringGridParam.Options:= StringGridParam.Options + [goRowSelect] - [goEditing];
end;