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[code] Win32 Moving/Showing/Hiding Toolbars and Dialogs

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  • H Offline
    honoluludesktop
    last edited by 26 Dec 2010, 14:48

    tt, most of this discussion is "over my head", but will the result permit toolbars to unfold perpendicular to the edge of a sketchup window like the menus do? If so please provide a simple version that we can use to compact our application toolbars.

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    • T Offline
      thomthom
      last edited by 26 Dec 2010, 15:12

      It doesn't modify existing toolbars. I'm simply modifying the appearance of webdialogs.

      @honoluludesktop said:

      but will the result permit toolbars to unfold perpendicular to the edge of a sketchup window like the menus do?

      You mean toolbars where you click on a button and it displays a dropdown list of more buttons?

      Thomas Thomassen β€” SketchUp Monkey & Coding addict
      List of my plugins and link to the CookieWare fund

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      • H Offline
        honoluludesktop
        last edited by 26 Dec 2010, 17:37

        Yes, Would go a long way to cleaning up our screens.

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        • T Offline
          thomthom
          last edited by 26 Dec 2010, 17:53

          Interesting though - but I'm not sure if it's possible. In either case - if you start making all toolbars like that they end up having the same problem as menus - that everything is hidden in sub-menus and you need an extra operation to reveal it - to be able to explore available commands. I feel the usability would not be improved.

          If one has that many toolbars open I'd rather ask if they are all required to be there on screen.

          Personally I assign hotkeys to the most frequent commands I use. Then I have a few toolbars for semi-frequent command. For everything else I use the menus.

          I have been toying with the idea of having a webdialog which allows you to filter out the commands you want - and make sets of tools you can switch between depending on the job.

          Thomas Thomassen β€” SketchUp Monkey & Coding addict
          List of my plugins and link to the CookieWare fund

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          • H Offline
            honoluludesktop
            last edited by 26 Dec 2010, 18:44

            @thomthom said:

            ...........if you start making all toolbars like that they end up having the same problem as menus - that everything is hidden in sub-menus and you need an extra operation to reveal it - to be able to explore available commands. I feel the usability would not be improved.
            .........

            You are probably right about this.

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            • T Offline
              thomthom
              last edited by 26 Dec 2010, 18:49

              I do have an experimental hack to catch all menus, commands and toolbar items that's created. I hope to tind time soon to put together a basic version of a plugin that let you quickly search and filter out available commands.

              Thomas Thomassen β€” SketchUp Monkey & Coding addict
              List of my plugins and link to the CookieWare fund

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              • D Offline
                Dan Rathbun
                last edited by 26 Dec 2010, 22:24

                @thomthom said:

                @honoluludesktop said:

                but will the result permit toolbars to unfold perpendicular to the edge of a sketchup window like the menus do?

                You mean toolbars where you click on a button and it displays a dropdown list of more buttons?

                These are called "Flyout Toolbars" and have been a part of the AutoCAD GUI since at least R13 (circa 1994) and perhaps even R12 in Win16 mode.

                This is one of the things on my to do list for Win32 Sketchup.

                I'm not here much anymore.

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                • T Offline
                  thomthom
                  last edited by 27 Dec 2010, 15:08

                  @thomthom said:

                  Just came across a nice API call that will be useful for creating webdialog toolbars:
                  http://social.msdn.microsoft.com/forums/en/csharpgeneral/thread/e7fef568-2c0b-41eb-9785-304f84d03819/#bf79c87e-ef49-456f-a485-aa767d841d20

                  One can use WS_EX_NOACTIVATE to prevent a window from catching focus - but from what I understand it'll still allow interaction events. I'll try it out as soon as I get home.

                  Just had a go at this. I could not get a webdialog to not get any focus when I set WS_EX_NOACTIVATE - but I could make a Notepad window to change. I don't understand why.
                  When I check the EX_STYLES of the webdialog the WS_EX_NOACTIVATE bits appear to be set.

                  ❓ ❓

                  Thomas Thomassen β€” SketchUp Monkey & Coding addict
                  List of my plugins and link to the CookieWare fund

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                  • D Offline
                    Dan Rathbun
                    last edited by 27 Dec 2010, 18:08

                    WebDialogs are child windows of the SU app window.

                    The Notepad window is a toplevel window.

                    I'm not here much anymore.

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                    • T Offline
                      thomthom
                      last edited by 27 Dec 2010, 18:37

                      Does that matter?
                      Floating toolbars are also child of the SU window...

                      Thomas Thomassen β€” SketchUp Monkey & Coding addict
                      List of my plugins and link to the CookieWare fund

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                      • T Offline
                        thomthom
                        last edited by 27 Dec 2010, 19:01

                        Sidenote: Win32 - Get SketchUp Window Handle

                        Thomas Thomassen β€” SketchUp Monkey & Coding addict
                        List of my plugins and link to the CookieWare fund

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                        • D Offline
                          Dan Rathbun
                          last edited by 27 Dec 2010, 21:35

                          @thomthom said:

                          Does that matter?

                          Well.. you you didnt understand why...
                          I propose the flag acts differently for child windows versus toplevel windows.

                          .. it's the only difference I can see at first glance.

                          I'm not here much anymore.

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                          • T Offline
                            thomthom
                            last edited by 28 Dec 2010, 00:12

                            Yea, I was looking at that myself, but when comparing to the floating toolbars I could not see any significant difference. But I'm not that familiar with Win32 API.

                            Thomas Thomassen β€” SketchUp Monkey & Coding addict
                            List of my plugins and link to the CookieWare fund

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                            • D Offline
                              driven
                              last edited by 28 Dec 2010, 16:17

                              @thomthom said:

                              One can use WS_EX_NOACTIVATE to prevent a window from catching focus - but from what I understand it'll still allow interaction events. I'll try it out as soon as I get home.

                              hi Thomas,

                              been trying to make a 'nice' Mac toolbar in a WebDialog, and discovered that if you hold down the cmd key (i.e. before clicking the tool icon) you don't move focus and the tool (and cursor image) is there immediately on mouse-out.
                              This is one click LESS than on a standard mac SU toolbar icons as I don't have to click back into the model space to activate the cursor.... (command clicking SU toolbar icons does the same thing, as well)
                              so, question is, do you have a snippet that will send a cmd_key_down on mouse-over of the WD?

                              john

                              learn from the mistakes of others, you may not live long enough to make them all yourself...

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                              • T Offline
                                thomthom
                                last edited by 28 Dec 2010, 16:47

                                @driven said:

                                been trying to make a 'nice' Mac toolbar in a WebDialog, and discovered that if you hold down the cmd key (i.e. before clicking the tool icon) you don't move focus and the tool (and cursor image) is there immediately on mouse-out.
                                This is one click LESS than on a standard mac SU toolbar icons as I don't have to click back into the model space to activate the cursor....

                                Are you saying that clicking a native toolbar button in SU steals focus from the main window? (I need to unpack my Mac from my moving-boxes to have a look at this.)

                                @driven said:

                                so, question is, do you have a snippet that will send a cmd_key_down on mouse-over of the WD?

                                I've never developed for OSX - so this is unknown territory for me. But will you even be able to receive mouse events if the window haven't got focus?

                                Thomas Thomassen β€” SketchUp Monkey & Coding addict
                                List of my plugins and link to the CookieWare fund

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                                • D Offline
                                  driven
                                  last edited by 28 Dec 2010, 17:43

                                  @thomthom said:

                                  @driven said:

                                  Are you saying that clicking a native toolbar button in SU steals focus from the main window? (I need to unpack my Mac from my moving-boxes to have a look at this.)

                                  NO, sorry, I just rechecked, I've got 'standard' icons in WebDialogs that I'm doing tests with, they behave the same as 'ruby' icons in the same WD...

                                  standard toolbars DO NOT highlight the box or such, and DO an instant tool-change,

                                  unlike

                                  the standard WD which requires
                                  1st click on dialog to highlight/focus box
                                  2nd click on icon to select manipulation tools or send action direct (undo, redo, etc...)
                                  3rd click on drawing space to reveal cursor (and select first point) if manipulation tool

                                  unless
                                  you hold down the cmd key before clicking....

                                  the WebDialog then behalves the same as 'standard' toolbar, and you can also change tabs, access drop-down menus, select tools etc... all without drawing focus away from drawing window... but you have to hold the cmd key the whole time...

                                  if the web dialog sent a function call to hold the cmd key down on mouse-over, then you'd have a useful tool window...

                                  hope that clarifies what I'm asking/saying/thinking.....

                                  clear as mud

                                  john

                                  learn from the mistakes of others, you may not live long enough to make them all yourself...

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                                  • T Offline
                                    thomthom
                                    last edited by 28 Dec 2010, 18:32

                                    Understood.

                                    This OSX behaviour of dealing with windows is causing my little greys to twitch in pain - my BezierSurface plugin was suppose to use WebDialog toolbars and windows extensively. Now I need to find a way to handle this or scrap the UI (which I've written a great part of the framework of already and find a new solution.)

                                    I've been searching for ways to manipulate windows under OSX like one can do under Windows with the Win32 API - but I never find anything. 😞

                                    Thomas Thomassen β€” SketchUp Monkey & Coding addict
                                    List of my plugins and link to the CookieWare fund

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                                    • D Offline
                                      driven
                                      last edited by 29 Dec 2010, 16:14

                                      @thomthom said:

                                      I've been searching for ways to manipulate windows under OSX like one can do under Windows with the Win32 API - but I never find anything. 😞

                                      Thom,

                                      I just did a scan of the different windows used in SU, what features do you want enabled/disabled in your WebDialogs?

                                      I'm having a look at UI.Browser.app to see if I can use that to tweak SU windows...

                                      john
                                      UI reports

                                      learn from the mistakes of others, you may not live long enough to make them all yourself...

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                                      • T Offline
                                        thomthom
                                        last edited by 29 Dec 2010, 16:25

                                        @driven said:

                                        I just did a scan of the different windows used in SU, what features do you want enabled/disabled in your WebDialogs?

                                        What I would like to be able to do is:

                                        1. Change the window frame style to toolwindow
                                        2. Allow the user to only click once to activate the UI elements in the webdialog (as oppose to click to give focus, click again to activate UI element)
                                        3. Be able to activate by click the UI elements in the webdialog without taking focus from the SU window.

                                        Thomas Thomassen β€” SketchUp Monkey & Coding addict
                                        List of my plugins and link to the CookieWare fund

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                                        • T Offline
                                          thomthom
                                          last edited by 29 Dec 2010, 16:26

                                          @driven said:

                                          [attachment=0:4644llpu]<!-- ia0 -->reports_Mac_SU_UI-Elements.zip<!-- ia0 -->[/attachment:4644llpu]

                                          I get errors when I try to unzip that file. Both Windows and WinRar reports errors.

                                          Thomas Thomassen β€” SketchUp Monkey & Coding addict
                                          List of my plugins and link to the CookieWare fund

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