A big problem for me creating diagrams in visio (and powerpoint and similar programs) is that if you have a background object, it blocks you from selecting multiple objects by lassoing. Instead you end up moving the background around, this is annoying.
In many applications there's an option to "lock" or "protect" a specific object so it becomes un-selectable while still visible on the drawing. In Visio there is no simple way of doing this as far as I'm aware.
There's a rather convoluted way of doing this, it feels to me like Visio designers wanted to make this difficult on purpose. The methods I'm aware of I list here, feel free to let me know of a better way(s)
You can protect objects from selection by going to (hidden by default) Developer tab and pick "shape design"-> protection -> selection. However this does not actually protect them from selection, which makes sense . To actually protect the said object from selection, you have to open drawing explorer, which is also hidden by default and the visibility tickbox is in hidden by default Developer tab under show/hide section.
Drawing explorer, however won't highlight whatever object you have selected in the drawing, another unexplicable design decision. If you want to see the name of the object you've selected with live update, you have to enable the diagram navigation pane. That's found in View tab on Show section under "task panes" icon. This pane does highlight whatever you've selected and you can rename the object to give it a meaningful name, but not change the shape in any other way.
To finally protect that shape from selection, right click on the top level document on the drawing explorer and pick "Protect document" and tick "shapes" and hey presto, now your background rectangle is visible but not selectable. Very straightforward indeed
There are also layers which offer similar functionality but they naturally come with their own gotchas.
You can see layers on the Drawing explorer under foreground pages, page name, "Layers" tree. To move an object on a specific layer, you cannot do it by right clicking on the object, because of course you can't. There's an assign to layer button in Home->Editing->Layers->"Assign to Layer", which will let you select the layer(s) for the selected object. You can also do this by right clicking on an object from the Drawing explorer, but you have to know the object name, because there's no reverse selection .. The object name you can get from the Diagram navigation. By default "protected" and "lock" layers do nothing.
To change what the layers do, you again go to the Home -> Editing -> Layers and select "Layer properties". This is also available from Drawing explorer by right clicking on the "layers" tree under a specific page. Here you can control if the layer is visible and/or protected. However, if you lock a layer, you also cannot move objects to/from it, as that'd be too easy. So you have to untick "lock" if you want to move stuff in and out of a protection layer.
So there are two awkward ways of doing that that I'm aware of.
If the shape really is a background object then maybe you should be looking at putting the shape on a background page. You can then make it the background page for your active page. That'll fix all your shape selection problems.
Related
"Group Box", for lack of a better word: I want areas in my user form which are visually different from others, with a different background colour and a frame around them, such as is possible to create using Frame controls. However, I want none of the events of Frame controls and none of their interaction with other controls in the form.
More particular, I want to be able to tab through all text, list, combo and check boxes, regardless of their location in 'Group Boxes', in fact also regardless of the possible location of their 'Group Box' within another 'Group Box'. Most of my controls have On Enter, On Exit, On Change and On Key even procedures attached to them which may re-direct the focus to any control on the form. Doing so under the constant interference of Frame controls with their events and rules - many of them not working correctly, none of them properly explained anywhere - is a gargantuan task. The easy way would be to have the visual design capabilities only, without the "intelligence" which assumes control in a way not compatible with my own plans.
Perhaps the one feature of frames which makes them unfit for my purposes is that they act as forms within the form, meaning they appoint an ActiveControl when activated which they refuse to release when another control takes the focus outside their own frame. It is inconvenient to prevent a first control's On Enter procedure from running when any control in a frame receives the focus (different for first and subsequent times), but it's a much bigger task to deal with the selected control's On Exit event which won't fire until the form is closed, meaning it is missed when the control optically loses the focus and a nuisance when it technically does.
Is there a control that fits my needs in MS Word? Or can the Frame control be stripped of its events in some way? Could I place a Text Box, for example, in front of a Frame control without it also being "within" it?
For MS Word use a label with a background color.
For MS Access use the rectangle Object behind the controls.
First make the form background a grey color. Then add subforms(ms access) and rectangles to segment the controls.
The end effect is it looking like a paneled interface.
You can use a Frame control. Place the other controls first, then place the Frame control, and move it to the back. This should look visually identical to having the controls in the Frame.
in the mobile game we are designing there exists three somehow similar menus:
Main Menu (with a bunch of icons like home, settings, share,toggle
sound,....)
Pause Menu (almost the same with just the text and icon sizes and
placement changes)
EndGame (very similar to pause menu with options to restart game)
now, there are at least two ways I can think of creating these menus:
Create one menu and change positions and sizes of needed icons/texts
in script
Just create 3 different panels in unity UI and call each one that is
needed.
As the assets used in both cases will be the same (well, in second case maybe more game objects) which one is a better solution?
I can write the script as easily as I can create menus (both take almost the same amount of time to develope)
I would recommend to make some kind of MenuViewManager class, with ability to load menu view from XML file. This can lead you to nice translation system in the future and can be very responsive for changes.
Here I've found some article, which can help you start:
http://unitynoobs.blogspot.com/2011/02/xml-loading-data-from-xml-file.html
I recommend having one Canvas with multiple panels. Each panel can be for a different menu (main, pause, game over) or a different set of options in the same menu (main, settings).
Have a script on the Canvas with places to drag each panel. Then turn on/off the panels from code.
You can also create a script to attach to the panels, which has public Button variables, which you can assign in the inspector. The Button objects you drag there in the inspector can be prefabs, so you can reuse them in any menu.
The more reuse you have, the more efficient it will be.
The JavaFX 2 colour picker has a button that pops up a colour chooser pane like so:
I'd like to do something similar, in that I'd like a custom pane to pop up when the button is clicked on and disappear when something else is clicked (in my case, a few image thumbnails). What would be the best way of achieving this? Should I use a ContextMenu and add a pane to a MenuItem somehow, or is there something else I should look at?
It's kind of difficult to do well with the current JavaFX 2.2 API.
Here are some options.
Use a MenuButton with a graphic set in it's MenuItem
This is the approach taken in Button with popup showed below's executable sample code.
Use a PopupControl
Take a look at how the ColorPicker does this in it's code.
ColorPicker extends PopupControl. You could do this, but not all of the API required to build your own PopupControl is currently public. So, for JavaFX 2.2, you would have to rely on internal com.sun classes which are deprecated and will be replaced by public javafx.scene.control classes in JDK8.
Use a ContextMenu
So, I think your idea to "use a ContextMenu and add a pane to a MenuItem" is probably the best approach for now. You should be able to do this by using a CustomMenuItem or setting a graphic on a normal MenuItem. The ContextMenu has nice relative positioning logic. A ContextMenu can also be triggered by a MenuButton.
Use a Custom Dialog
To do this, display a transparent stage at a location relative to the node.
There is some sample code to get you started which I have temporarily linked here.
The sample code does relative positioning to the sides of the main window, but you could update it to perform positioning relative to the sides of a given node (like the ContextMenu's show method).
Use a Glass Pane
To do this, create a StackPane as your root of your main window. Place your main content pane as the first node in the StackPane and then create a Group as the second node in the stackpane, so that it will layer over the top of the main content. Normally, the top group contains nothing, but when you want to show your popup, place it in the top group and translate it to a location relative to the appropriate node in your main content.
You could look at how the anchor nodes in this demo are used to see how this might be adaptable to your context.
Is there a relevant update for this for JavaFX8?
There is not much difference of relevance for Java 8, in general the options are as outlined in this post based on Java 2.2 functionality. Java 8 does add Dialog and Alert functionality, but those are more targeted at use of dialogs with borders, titles and buttons rather than the kind of functionality desired in the question. Perhaps you might be able to start from the Dialog class and heavily customize it to get something close to what is needed, but you are probably better off starting from a blank stage or PopupControl instead.
I am building an iPhone app for a library and I want to give few options to the user to search books by. A user can search a book by title, author, topics, or date of publication.
What I want to know what's the best way to display these search options to the user? In terms of HTML, it would be easy - either use a drop down list or radio buttons. I tried using UIPickerView but honestly, that looks terribly ugly and destroys the aesthetics of the view of my app.
The other option I was thnking was using segmented control, but is it possible to have a vertical segment control in stead of horizontal one? The selection texts can be too long.
Any ideas?
If you want a vertical segmented control, you'll have to make it yourself. Create a textured image with dividers. I would export each section as a PNG separately. Then create a picture of each section with the "pressed down" gradient and export each segment as a separate PNG again.
I would then make a new class. If there is a specific number of objects in your segmented control or this is a one time thing, the class may not even be necessary. If not, then in the class constructor pass an array with the titles of the segments in your segmented control. For the first and last objects, use the pictures you made with rounded corners. For the objects in between, use the standard pictures. Then put the titles on top. When a segment is tapped (perhaps use hidden UIButtons), you can use a delegate method to tell the main search class which one was tapped, and then the class can replace the normal picture of that segment with the pressed down one.
Thanks for the options.
I ended up creating a simple table to show my choices.
User clicks on "search by", which opens up the table with options and then when you select any option, you return back to main view with the chosen search option.
Does anyone have any examples or resources where i might find information on scrolling text which is too long to display in a button control? I'm thinking something along these lines.
Display as much text will fit within the current rect with a '...' at the end to signify overflow.
Pause for say 1 second then slowly scroll the text to the right edge displaying the right part of the string.
Display as much text will fit within the current rect with a '...' at the beginning to signify overflow.
Start the whole thing over in reverse.
Is there an easy way to do this using the "core" or built in "animation" frameworks on a certain mobile device?
[edit]
Iwanted to add some more details as i think people are more focused on wether or not what i'm trying to accomplish is appropriate. The button is for the answers on a trivia game. It does not perform any speciffic UI function but is for displaying the answer. Apple themselves is doing this in their iQuiz trivia game on the iPod Nano and i think its a pretty elegant solution to answers that are longer than the width of my button.
In case its the '...' that is the difficult part of this. Lets say i removed this requirement. Could i have the label for the button be full sized but clipped to the client rect of the button and use some animation methods to scroll it within the clipping rect? This would give me almost the same effect minus the ellipses.
Here's an idea: instead of ellipses (...), use a gradient on each side, so the extra text fades away into the background color. Then you could do this with three CALayers: one for the text and two for fade effect.
The fade masks would just be rectangles with a gradient that goes from transparent to the background color. They should be positioned above the text layer. The text would be drawn on the text layer, and then you just animate it sliding back and forth in the manner you describe. You can create a CGPath object describing the path and add it to a CAKeyframeAnimation object which you add to the text layer.
As for whether you think this is "easy" depends on how well you know Core Animation, but I think once you learn the API you'll find this isn't too bad and would be worth the trouble.
Without wishing to be obtuse, maybe you should rethink your problem. A button should have a clear and predictable function. It's not a place to store and display text. Perhaps you could have a description show on screen with a nice standard button below?
Update with source code example:
Here is some ready to use source code example (actually a full zipped Xcode project with image and nib files and some source code), not for the iPhone, not using Core Animation, just using a couple of simple NSImages and a NSImageView. It is just a cheap hack, it does not implement the full functionality you requested (sorry, but I don't feel like writing your source code for you :-P), horrible code layout (hey, I just hacked this together within a couple of minutes, so you can't expect any better ;-)) and it's just a demonstration how this can be done. It can be done with Core Animation, too, but this approach is simpler. Composing the button animation into a NSImageView is not as nice as subclassing a NSView and directly paint to its context, but it's much simpler (I just wanted to hack together the simplest solution possible). It will also not scroll back once it scrolled all the way to the right. Therefor you just need another method to scroll back and start another NSTimer that fires 2 seconds after you drew the dots to the left.
Just open the project in Xcode and hit run, that's all there is to do. Then have a look at the source code. It's really not that complicated (however, you may have to reformat it first, the layout sucks).
Update because of comment to my answer:
If you don't use Apple UI elements at all, I fail to see the problem. In that case your button is not even a button, it's just a clickable View (NSView if you use Cocoa). You can just sub-class NSView as MyAnswerView and overwrite the paint method to paint into the view whatever you wish. Multiline text, scrolling text, 3D text animated, it's completely up to your imagination.
Here's an example, showing how someone subclassed NSView to create a complete custom control that does not exist by default. The control looks like this:
See the funny thing in the upper left corner? That is a control. Here's how it works:
I hate to say that, as it is no answer to your question, but "Don't do that!". Apple has guidelines how to implement a user interface. While you are free to ignore them, Apple users are used to have UIs following these guidelines and not following them will create applications that Apple users find ugly and little appealing.
Here are Apple's Human Interface Guidelines
Let me quote from there
Push Button Contents and Labeling
A push button always contains text, it
does not contain an image. If you need
to display an icon or other image on a
button, use instead a bevel button,
described in “Bevel Buttons.”
The label on a push button should be a
verb or verb phrase that describes the
action it performs—Save, Close, Print,
Delete, Change Password, and so on. If
a push button acts on a single
setting, label the button as
specifically as possible; “Choose
Picture…,” for example, is more
helpful than “Choose…” Because buttons
initiate an immediate action, it
shouldn’t be necessary to use “now”
(Scan Now, for example) in the label.
Push button labels should have
title-style capitalization, as
described in “Capitalization of
Interface Element Labels and Text.” If
the push button immediately opens
another window, dialog, or application
to perform its action, you can use an
ellipsis in the label. For example,
Mail preferences displays a push
button that includes an ellipsis
because it opens .Mac system
preferences, as shown in Figure 15-8.
Buttons should contain a single verb or a verb phrase, not answers to trivia game! If you have between 2 and 5 answers, you should use Radio Buttons to have the user select the answer and an OK button to have the user accept the answer. For more than 5 answers, you should consider a Pop-up Selector instead according to guidelines, though I guess that would be rather ugly in this case.
You could consider using a table with just one column, one row per answer and each cell being multiline if the answer is very long and needs to break. So the user selects a table row by clicking on it, which highlights the table cell and then clicks on an OK button to finish. Alternatively, you can directly continue, as soon as the user selects any table cell (but that way you take the user any chance to correct an accidental click). On the other hand, tables with multiline cells are rather rare on MacOS X. The iPhone uses some, but usually with very little text (at most two lines).
Pretty sure you can't do that using the standard API, certainly not with UILineBreakMode. In addition, the style guide says that an ellipsis indicates that the button when pressed will ask you for more information -for example Open File... will ask for the name of a file. Your proposed use of ellipsis violates this guideline.
You'd need some custom logic to implement the behaviour you describe, but I don't think it's the way to go anyway.
This is not a very good UI practice, but if you still want to do it, your best bet is to do so via a clickable div styled to look like a button.
Set the width of the div to an explicit value, and its overflow to hidden, then use a script executing on an interval to adjust the scrollLeft property of this div.