OpenEuphoria

Re: More simple UI questions

• Posted by CChris <christian.cuvier at agric??ture.gouv.fr> Jan 09, 2008
• 657 views

Mike777 wrote:
> 
> CChris wrote:
> > 
> > Mike777 wrote:
> > > 
> > > I have a window with a number of textboxes and some groups.  When tabbing
> > > through
> > > the controls, when I hit tab while positioned at the "bottom" of one group
> > > it
> > > doesn't go directly to the first control of the next group.  Instead, it
> > > seems
> > > to go to the group itself, which doesn't show any visible signs of being
> > > "selected"
> > > so the user experience is that the text cursor has disappeared.  Hitting
> > > another
> > > tab puts the text cursor in the first control of the next group.
> > > 
> > > I have confirmed that the IDE has been set so that the order is correct
> > > (there
> > > are no controls, enabled or otherwise, listed between the example controls
> > > of
> > > the last paragraph).
> > > 
> > > If anybody has any ideas what I can check for, I would appreciate it.
> > > 
> > > Thanks
> > > 
> > > Mike
> > 
> > The expected behaviour of tabbing is to cycle through all elements of a
> > group,
> > once the group has been entered. You have to do something else to change
> > from
> > a group to another. Since there is no general concept of what the "next
> > group"
> > is, there is no standard keyboard shortcut to go there - it makes sense for
> > nested groups, but not for unnested ones -..
> > 
> > As for what happens on reaching the last element of a group, I don't observe
> > the effect you mention in he grouptabs.exw demo. Did you run it and have the
> > same experience?
> 
> I find the behaviour in that program, grouptab.ewx, to be the opposite of what
> I want. It has four groups and 4 standalone controls.  Of the four groups,
> three
> are at the same level as the 4 standalone controls and the first of those
> groups
> has a nested group.
> 
> The behaviour on my machine is that each group acts something like Hotel
> California.
>  You can never leave (using the tab key).  That is, the tab key cycles you
>  through
> the group itself and once you are in that group, you are stuck there.  It uses
> the arrow keys (down, up) to cycle through groups.  That is not intuitive at
> all (to me).
> 
> What I really want is to ignore the groups entirely.  I just want the group
> indicators to function as visual grouping cues for the end user, not in any
> way affect the UI experience.
> 
> I just tried ensuring that all groups have no child controls.  That is,
> ensuring
> that all the controls have their parent set as the window, not the group.  No
> change. 
> 
> So the question is how to simulate a group without actually having one.  
> 
> Thanks
> 
> Mike

Easy: draw a rectangle encompassing all the controls you want "grouped", give it
a border and/or a distinctive background color, all this using drawRectangle().
Then create a label with appropriate background and text, sticking it where it
seems more relevant or viible. This way, the frame work will simply be a visual
frame. Oh, and setEnable(the_label,w32False) so that it doesn't interfere with
tabbing.

CChris