I'm looking for a way of implementing a sort of inset caption before a set of tabs, something like this:
The tab set is not supposed to be multi-line, will only be horizontal and laid out at the top. However it should be correctly scrollable when there are too many tabs.
I fear I'm going to be restricted here with regard to using third-party controls, but I could use subclassing on the standard TTabControl to add the necessary changes to the standard looks and behaviour. (I don't need it to be TPageControl, because it's only the specific arrangement of the tabs that I am interested in.)
Maybe there's some way of implementing this with craftily arranged combination of standard controls, which, despite my endevours, has escaped me.
Basically, any ideas or pointers are welcome.
Oh, and additional requirement is, it should blend well with desktop themes.
Granted some time has passed, but I recently needed this style and found you can do it with the TMS Software TAdvOfficePager. It has a property FixedTabs, which I set to 1 in this case. It also has an OnChanging event where you can prevent access to a tab, in this case I used AllowChange := (ToPage > 0); Lastly, I set the first tab to disabled.
Then just style the first tab different than the rest and you can have something like this:
Have you tried to make the first tab to be the caption you want.
With some additional logic you can restrict the selection of this tab.
I don't know if you can control the style of each tab individually to make the first one look as it is not the tab.
Here is crafty arrangement of controls that will work. I have done this sort of thing in the past. Best of all it automatically handles scrolling of tabs.
Related
on a form I need a first set of UI controls at process start, later I only need a second set of components. I put the set for process set #1 on a first panel , after finish process step #1 I start to hide panel #1, is ther any better way from UI design guide lines ?
I would use Frames instead of Panels. You can design Frames at design-time just like Forms, and then create instances of your Frames at run-time as needed. So create your first Frame (you can even place it on the Form at design-time) and then at run-time, when ready you can destroy the first Frame instance and create an instance of the second Frame.
Using panels like you describe is a very common and very respectable way to proceed. Nothing wrong with doing it that way.
Another often used idiom is a page control with hidden tabs. So, make a page control. Add two tab sheets. Set TabVisible to False for both tab sheets. Then at run time set the ActivePage property of the page control to specify which page is shown to the user.
The page control approach is really rather similar to using panels. It's perhaps marginally easier to work with at design time, but much comes down to personal preference.
I would like to add an icon to the header of my data grid as it is done in Thunderbird.
There is an icon that is above the vertical scrollbar, no matter the position of the horizontal scrollbar. This icon allows the setup of the columns.
In Delphi there a lot of different grid components, that allow customizations and adding icons to there cells / header cells. But I could not find any component that has an area above the vertical scrollbar that is fixed, which when clicked allows some action. I could even use the VirtualTreeView component to emulate the grid, if it turns out to be easier to customize that component.
I am looking for some guidance on what need to be done to get that functionality.
Thanks,
Thomas
VirtualTreeView in Listbox mode would be nice, because of it's speed, great documentation and ease use in MVC-like patterns. Delphi tempts to store data in the visual components themselves, which letter causes troubles. While VTW allwos the same, it also allows to acutally separate data from GUI, and i like it.
But i am surprised by your claim "which when clicked allows some action.".
Even most basic components allow it:
http://docwiki.embarcadero.com/Libraries/XE2/en/Vcl.Grids.TCustomGrid.OnFixedCellClick
So could you make more detaiils, why you cannot use standard components ? with screenshot and editors, how u want it rendered, where you want to click and what kind of action should happen ?
I am running Lazarus 0.9.30.2.
I have a TForm on which there is a TPageControl. Within the TPageControl there is a series of TTabSheets. At runtime the order of the TTabSheets differs from design time (see picture).
The order in design time is what I want to see at runtime, at least for the very first time the form is displayed. Why does the order change at run time and is there a way to control this?
#TLama is correct that this is related to way the Windows tab control behaves when in multi-line view. The behaviour you are observing is related to the way selection is handled for multi-line tabs. When you select a tab it is always shown in the bottom row because the visual cue to indicate which tab is selected can only really work for tabs in the bottom row.
Given that constraint the control simply has to rearrange rows of tabs as you modify the selected tab. It's astoundingly confusing for the user. Good UI design never has UI elements changing position like this.
Clearly what is happening here is that the rearrangement is happening at runtime when the form is first shown and for whatever reason this is resulting in a different arrangement from the design time arrangement. Given that the user can arrange the rows in any order just by selecting them I'm not sure you should worry about what order the rows appear in.
If you are dead set on forcing a particular arrangement when the form first shows you can add code like this to a OnCreate handler for the form:
PageControl1.ActivePage := TabSheet9;
PageControl1.ActivePage := TabSheet5;
PageControl1.ActivePage := TabSheet1;
Best practise for UI design is to avoid multi-line tab controls and I urge you to attempt to re-design your UI that way.
I have two radiobuttons in a TRadioGroup. All the logic behind how they are supposed to work is fine. But the TRadioGroup controler has a frame around it that I thought I would be able to delete using a border property or something like that. But the control doesn't seem to have any property that bears any resemblance to a border/frame. How do I set the controler to not include a frame?
TRadioGroup does not support what you are looking for. Place two TRadioButton components onto a TPanel instead. Then you can make it look how you want.
I don't think you can hide the border on a standard radio group box. It looks like you could create a custom descendant and override the painting if drawing normally, but that approach could be a bit more involved with theme support. Overall it sounds like a lot of work to go that route.
The next most obvious approach is to replace the radio group with a number of individual radio buttons on a container such as a panel. That would work and would be simple code but it could get messy. It seems a lot of busy work for little gain and I am lazy enough to look for another option.
There is a kludge you can use. If you put the radio group on a panel rather than directly onto the form (or other background) you can make the panel under-sized compared to the radio group. You want the panel to be as big as the interior of the radio group but not as big as the border. Then set the top and left of the radio group to negative numbers so that the border falls outside the parent panel. The border is not visible this way.
I know it's not best practice but I had a similar issue and couldn't redesign everything. So I did this to simply hide the border (and works great so far).
HANDLE Region = CreateRectRgn(3, 3, RadioGroup->Width-3, RadioGroup->Height-3) ;
SetWindowRgn(RadioGroup->Handle, Region, true);
We have developed a software. In this software we are show and hiding a few controls on various input screens depending on various situations.
When we hid a control what happens is that the space occupied by that control is left as it is and layout looks very bad at times esp. in screens that have larger numbers of controls. Our client does not like this and has asked us to do something about this.
My question:
Is there some way by which we can create Fluid Layouts so that when a control is hidden the rest of the controls automatically adjusts themselves to fill the empty space left by the control hidden and when the control is show they should automatically make way for the control and adjust themselves accordingly.
I know we can achieve this by coding but that will require a lot of code in each screen for adjusting the layout. I am looking something which will reduce coding in each screen as there are 80+ screens.
Please suggest some way which is less error pron and can get rid of unnecessary coding in each input screen.
I think your best option is to use a component that handles the layout of your vcl controls on your form in runtime (depending on the conditions that you define). I recommend you try the Devexpress ExpressLayout Control
you can find two great demo videos here
ExpressLayout Control - How to Customize Layout Views
ExpressLayout Control - Create and Customize a Simple Layout
(source: devexpress.com)
You can check these features
Auto-Management - Control groups and individual control elements are automatically managed by the Layout Control. You never worry about pixel-by-pixel positioning.
Form auto-sizing - The form can be automatically resized to fit its contents best.
Bye.
Now, I'm not sure how complex layout you have, but I guess you can use TFlowPanel and/or TGridPanel for this. Flowpanel has a nice handling of components that change visiblity. I'm not sure how well gridpanel handles the same...
What kind of controls are you dynamically hiding, and what do you mean with auto fill space?
I do not know if it is as this simple: place controls on panels, and use align alTop/alClient/alBottom. When you hide a panel, all other panels will move automatically up.
One problem though: if you want to show a panel again, the order of panels can sometimes be screwed up... Can be fixed by manually setting .Top property, or "hide" by setting .Height := 1;
What I would do with a complex layout is actually split it up into several tabs. This has two advantages. It simplifies the form layout, and allows you to show and hide whole tabs depending on choices made in other tabs.
Raize Components have a TRzFlowPanel UI component. Does exactly what you're after.
Use TRzFlowPanel to put an empty flow panel on a form. The major difference between a traditional panel and a flow panel is the way in which controls are placed. With a traditional panel, you place a control (such as a button) in a specific location. You can freely move that control to any location within the panel using the mouse. In a flow panel, each control is placed in a specific location, regardless of where you place it with the mouse. The automatic location is controlled by the FlowStyle property. For example, using the default FlowStyle property of LeftRightTopBottom, the first control you add to the flow panel snaps to the top left corner. The second control that you add snaps next to the first control, and so on.