Qt overlay(drop-up) box - qt

I am creating a Qt application where I need to display contents in an overlay box(Please refer to the attached image). The box needs to slide up from behind the bottom dock when a button is pressed and slide down by toggling the button. I tried with a QWidget but couldn't achieve what I wanted. Also I don't know how to list the elements in the overlay box. The elements are dynamic or changing.

The widgets stacking order is defined by their order in the QObject hierarchy tree. The first element is the bottom, and every next is on top of the previous. Children are on top of their parents, in widgets confined within their bounds, in QML free.
If you want that sliding element to appear on top of everything else, just put its parent on top of everything else.
After all it is on top of the bottom control bar, which is on top of the playlist, so you have it all worked out for you.
The same applies if you decide to do the wiser thing and use QML instead of QWidget. Animation and states are much easier there. Not to mention more specific designs.

Related

How can I create multiple custom widgets and display them with their absolute position

So I currently have got a custom widget, and I want to add them to the main window after clicking a button. I would like to add them all to one fixed position first and then I will be able to drag them wherever I like. I am able to create and display these custom widgets with help of QHBoxLayout or QVBoxLayout, but in this case they will not be in the same position after I create them. Any help will be appreciated!
As the names suggest, the QLayout classes manage the position and geometry of the items added to them. You cannot move (eg. drag) an item out of a layout w/out first removing it from the layout (QLayout::removeItem() and derivatives). For example when you drag a toolbar or dock widget out of a QMainWindow it goes through all sorts of machinations to remove it from the MW layout, change the widget's window flags, remember the old position in the layout, and so on. And the reverse to dock it again.
To do what you describe (drag widgets arbitrarily around a window) you would need to not use a QLayout and position the widgets manually by specifying a QWidget::setGeometry() for example. After initial position, and assuming the user has some way to grab the widget (title bar or drag handle you made, etc), you'll probably still need to manage their positions, for example if the main window is resized (if you care about keeping them contained). Essentially you'd have a bunch of separate widgets acting as individual windows and probably need some way to keep track of them.
I don't know what kind of widgets you're talking about, but one option may be a QMdiArea which lets the user drag windowed widgets around, tabify them, save/restore state, and so on.
For more flexibility you could also look into the Qt Graphics Framework. The graphics scene has a lot of features for user-movable items/widgets, keeping track of them, and so on. It is probably the most flexible method overall, and you can also use regular QWidgets inside a graphics scene.
A couple other Q/A about arbitrarily positioning widgets (I'm sure there are more to be found):
QPushButton alignment on top another widget
How to keep Push Buttons constant in relative to change of Label Size in PyQt4

z-index when nesting custom elements seems to get a new stacking context. Why?

I have a dialog box in my application which displays a list of cards. I made a jsbin simplified version of it
http://jsbin.com/qopocej/edit?html,output
If I click on the blue outline on any of the cards a nice dialog box pops up with a short menu item in it. Particularly click on the blue outline below 'Joe' and see how the dialog box covers the current card and those surrounding it.
I need to refactor the code so that this current element in each card action is a new custom element, which brings with it all the functionality of displaying the menu dialog box. In the real application this does some ajax calls to the serve to update information.
The problem I have is that the very fact of refactoring has destroyed the way the dialog box displays. This is shown is this jsbin
http://jsbin.com/vecoxuh/edit?html,output
Click on the red box under 'Joe' and see how the dialog box is above the current card, but slips under the other cards nearby
I assume it is something to do with "stacking context", since the explicit styles that has added a z-index to each of the two dialog boxes should imply it still works, but it doesn't
The .item with an active dialog needs to be set a z-index that's higher than its siblings. The child dropdown menu's z-index is relative to that of its parents, no matter what it's explicitly set to. So if the furthermost parent does not have a z-index that enables it to overlap the other cards, none of its children will be able to do the same.

How can I allow user resize on elements within the window using Qt designer?

I want to allow a user using my application to be able to drag a boundary between two widgets in my window which will resize the two (i.e. you drag it down and the top one will get bigger while the bottom gets smaller, and vice-versa).
Is there anything in Qt designer that will allow a user to resize an element in the window, within certain constraints?
Thank you
What you're describing is called a QSplitter widget. In Qt Designer, you can create one by selecting 2 or more widgets, and then clicking the splitter button on the toolbar at the top. It's in the same location as the layout buttons. It will place those widgets inside a QSplitter. You still need to place the splitter widget inside another layout. It will create a handle between them to let you resize the portion that each widget gets.
You're looking for the QDockWidget. It can do all that you described above and more. The user can dock the widget to different sides of the window, changing which widget is on the top or bottom. You can customize the minimum and maximum sizes, as well as default sizes.

Semi-transparent QWidget over QGLWidget: Strange results

I have a full size QGLWidget which paints the application background using QPainter (might change to native openGL commands in the future).
On top of this QGLWidget I use QWidgets (non-GL) for the user interface elements. These are, for example, QLineEdits and QPushButtons. I put them into a custom painted QWidget which uses semi-transparent background painting. The paintEvents of the QLineEdit and QPushButton are overwritten and use semi-transparent backgrounds, too.
The whole UI should look like the following (This is a screenshot where I disabled OpenGL and used QWidget instead of QGLWidget for the background. Note the semi-transparent top bar which also draws a shadow (within its own region)):
When the QLineEdit has the focus, it should have a higher opacity but still not fully opaque:
So now, with OpenGL enabled (The background then is a QGLWidget), the semi-transparent widgets above don't paint on top of the background but on (it seems to be) uninitialized data. The image shining through the top bar is sometimes the whole window itself and sometimes other windows currently being on my desktop.
This currently looks like the following (In this screenshot, the data on which the semi-transparent painting operations are painted on seems to be an image of the widget itself, having an offset.):
When I wrote text into the line edit (here: "This is some text which has been there before!"), removed it and set the focus back to the background widget (so the magnifier icon and the placeholder text appear), the previously painted things still shine through (Note that the visible border should not be visible anymore, but also still shines through):
So the problem is: Instead of being painted on top of the underlying widgets, the semi-transparent widget is painted on top of the old results, initially being something like "uninitialized memory".
Why does this happen? How can I solve the problem?
Things you should know before answering:
The background scene is a composition of tiles which are rendered off-screen. So it can be painted very fast and repainting of the background for every little change of the overlay isn't problematic.
The top bar is a custom QWidget with manual painting and arrangement of the contained two widgets (the button and line edit).
The two widgets overwrite the paintEvent, only draw their own (semi-transparent) background when they have focus and don't use frames already provided by Qt. So the white border in the second screenshot is drawn in my custom paintEvent.
I want the background and the composition of overlay widgets to be separately implementable. The background is an AbstractMapView which has some concrete map view classes. The whole window is an AbstractView (there are multiple concrete views, too), which contains both a concrete map view and the overlay widgets, composed in a way itself decides. Therefore, I don't want the logic of the overlay widgets to be part of the underlying map view. (I hope you understood this, as it is a bit complicated.)
This sounds like an issue where the GL content (i.e. your background aka the QGLWidget) is not in the Qt context. While I'm not a pro on GL painting with Qt, you may want to look at this discussion regarding GL painting and a QLabel for some direction/potential hints.
http://www.qtcentre.org/threads/40335-QLabel-on-top-of-a-QGLWidget-background-issue
In short, we here at the office use OpenGL painting and offscreen rendering of maps and it's very important to make sure Qt is aware of the pixels so your foreground widgets can have the semi-transparency applied to their backgrounds.
The particular product we use also renders the map in tiles and supports providing the GL output in a buffer (i.e. it's call a snapshot and is provided as a bitmap) at which point we use the paintEvent of a regular QWidget to paint the buffer so that the painted pixels are in Qt context.
You can define a Qframe with Qt::SplashScreen flag as the search box and set its opacity. Put your widgets inside it such as the search textbox and positon it where it should appear on the mainwindow. It will also be a good idea to reposition it as the mainwindow is moved or resized overriding its moveEvent.

QT - Place Buttons on Bottom Right

I am trying to place a set of buttons so that they are anchored to the bottom right of the screen. My problem is that whenever I resize the screen, the buttons are not anchored to the bottom right, but stay in its current position.
I have placed two Push Buttons inside a Horizontal Layout. I then placed this layout inside a Grid Layout, which contains a Horizontal and Vertical Spacer. I have modified the Grid Layout layoutSize property to SetMaximumSize.
What am I doing incorrectly, so that I can get my buttons to be anchored to the bottom right?
You have almost everything just right here, but you probably overlooked something that is really easy to miss when you first start using Qt Designer.
Your grid layout is sitting inside your widget with a fixed size and position. It too needs to be managed by a layout. If you take a look at the Object Inspector on the top right (that contains your hierarchy) you will probably see your top level widget with a red icon. This indicates that it contains no layout. You have two options to fix this...
Have your existing grid layout placed into another main layout (like a vertical layout). You would simply right click on your top level widget in the Object Inspector -> Lay Out -> [Choose a main layout type].
Have your grid be the main layout. To do this you would need to remove the grid layout and have your child items arranged exactly how you have them in that picture. Then follow the previous option, right clicking on the top level widget (or the blank background) and choose Lay out -> Grid. This will pop your widgets into a Grid at a best visual fit (which you can then fix if needed), and your grid will be the top level layout.
That grid layout will make placing other widgets quite hard. Try this instead:
Add (from left to right) horizontal spacer and the two buttons.
Multiselect them all.
Select "Lay Out Horizontally" (Ctrl-H) from the Qt Designer's (or Qt Creator's) top toolbar (not from the widget box in the left!).
Add vertical spacer on top of the previous widgets.
Select the main window by clicking it (none of the added widgets are now selected).
Select "Lay Out Vertically" (Ctrl-L) from the top toolbar.
Done.
It seems that you're doing it correctly. Just forgot to apply a layout to your central widget, right? The Grid layout should be arranged in your central widget. The more convenient way is to remove grid layout widget and lay out the central widget in a grid ;-)

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