Should I use Button or TextBlock? - button

I have two options. I need 48 of a certain type control; it needs to respond to clicks and taps (for touch devices).
I could use Buttons, using the TextButtonStyle, and the Click event. Or I could use TextBlock, with the Tapped event.
I reckon buttons may be more "expensive" to create. OTOH, although I believe "Tapped" is also called when the user clicks the component, this makes me a little nervous due to its nomenclature, I guess.
Another difference is that a button takes up only the width necessary, whereas a TextBlock takes everything; and I want the underlying Grid to be tappable, so the TextBlock is kind of a problem that way. Is there a property that will make it more modest like the button?

There is design guidance for Windows Store apps on when and how to use buttons at http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-US/library/windows/apps/hh465470. Based on your description and this guidance, it sounds like buttons are the way to go. Responding to click events is what they were made for, and TextBlocks add the extra issues that you describe.

Related

QMainWindow that ignore clicks, passes them on to background windows

I'd like to create a semi-transparent information window that doesn't get in the way of the user's other activities. Any clicks on the window should just pass through as if the window wasn't there.
How would you recommend implementing such behavior? Is there an easy way to do it or do I have to follow a clumsy workaround? I'm thinking of hiding the window, re-executing the click, then making the window visible again. But this would still screw up drag'n'drop gestures.
Take a look at an enum value of Qt::WidgetAttribute: Qt::WA_TransparentForMouseEvents:
When enabled, this attribute disables the delivery of mouse events to
the widget and its children. Mouse events are delivered to other
widgets as if the widget and its children were not present in the
widget hierarchy; mouse clicks and other events effectively "pass
through" them. This attribute is disabled by default.
I did a little more research into "mouse event transparency" (didn't know the exact terminology) and I found this.
I don't think there is a general and easy approach to your problem. You will probably have to dig into the native API. Once events reach an application they are not forwarded to other applications on their own.
What do you guys think? Am I doomed to work with the native APIs of each OS?

How to make Qt widgets do not react on mouse click

I need on my form ordinary widgets (e.g. buttons) do not react on mouse clicks but NOT to be disabled (it change look to grayed one -- not good).
I wonder is there some neat small hack for this?
You could stick in an event filter and filter out the mouse events before passing the remaining events on for processing, but I'm not sure that not giving the user a visual clue that certain elements are effectively disabled is such a good idea.
You could try using style sheets to control how the disabled mode of the buttons in your form get styled. Unfortunately I'm not sure exactly how to do that but you could have a look at the style sheet docs to get you started.

flex chat/telnet application send/receive same window in TextArea

Just wanting to know if anybody has seen an example of a telnet/chat or other console like FLEX application where you can use the same TextArea as input/ouput area.
I've been trying to modify the app at:
http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/html/17_Networking_and_communications_8.html
but so far, computer says no.
All the implementations I've seen use a combination of TextInput and TextArea.
The challenge is that we'll be using this app to telnet into some old routers and we'll need to do a fair amount of copy/pasting. Based on what I've seen, it seems that I would need to point the mouse into the TextInput in order to be able to right click and paste, which is not very sleak.....
Your thoughts,
Fran
edit Just realized that I had trimmed out what was directly pertaining to the question: I was unable to find anything that used the TextArea for input and output; see the below suggestions if custom-component suggestions are ok.
The TextArea component only fires a change event whenever a user adds input. Whenever you set the text field programmatically, a change event does not fire--you could maybe use that as a way to know what is user input and console "responses" by looking for carriage-returns (\r).
I'm unsure if you have a requirement to maintain the user's input at the bottom-most line (like a console), even after the console responds with something like auto-complete. If that's the case, then something a bit more complex would have to come into play (such as remembering where the user's input started/ended) or the requirement of a single-component console needs to be reconsidered--sleek is nice, but not always necessary.

Navigation issue in Flex - ViewStack, states or something else?

I have a bit of doubt regarding my application which is being created using Mate framework. The first thing user has to do is to log in, so I created Login.mxml view. After a successful login I need to display the main view with applicationControlBar at the top and a workspace below. At the moment I have two separate views, so if I understand correctly it makes sense using ViewStack.
Thing is, I'd like also to display some kind of panel with buttons on top of the workspace after login - here is screenshot. After clicking on a button the panel should dissapear. To complicate things a little bit more, there is a possibility for this panel to change state. Clicking on a specific button may result in showing progress bar at the bottom of panel.
I feel I should create separate view, MenuDialog.mxml and put there buttons, progress bar and states, but how to display it on the top of the workspace? I hope my problem is clear enough :)
I would make the panel a popUp, with the main application (or the ViewStack's parent container) as the parent of the popUp. You can use the PopUpManager Class to close it based on user actions within the Panel.
Assuming that perhaps you do not want a modal login style panel (which many apps these days eschew) then you should absolutely use states rather than ViewStacks.
States are a much cleaner way to distinguish the various, uh, states that your UI can be in -LOGGED_IN, LOGGED_OUT, etc.
It may take a little to get used to working with states, but once you do, you'll never go back. :-)

How can I disable an individual item in a combo box in Flex so that it is not clickable?

I want to create a combobox in flex which will take three values, Available, Unavailable, and Busy. The constraint is, I should not allow user to go directly from Unavailable to Busy. So when a User is selected Unavailable, I should keep the Busy item disabled (unselectable), but a user will be able to go directly from Available to Busy. I chouldn't find a straight forward way to disable an item in combobox in Flex. How can I do that?
Have you considered using radio buttons rather than a combo box? It's clear how to do this for radio buttons, for one thing. Also, it can often be friendlier to present the available options without requiring a click to reveal them. (Especially if, as in this case, you are adding the possibility that an option is "available, but not possible for you right now for some reason not shown in this combo-box item").
If you really want a combo-box, you can use the click event to display it in a non-standard fashion by probably changing its style; and then, if clicked anyway, Then, in the selected event, reject the choice (hopefully with an indication of why),
Or, if you want to simply remove it from the list, you can have the click listener event repopulate the source list each time, based on conditions. But that might be confusing to the user, too.
You can also have a look at
www.stoimen.com/blog/2009/03/05/flex-3-combobox-disabled-options/
which references
wmcai.blog.163.com/blog/static/4802420088945053961/
(note for NoScript users you must have 163.com and 126.com at least temporarily allowed to be
able to properly see this page)
it works very well even though I added the code for being able to properly handle keyboard
events in the dropdown list
Full self working example available at
http://olivierbourdon.homedns.org/OpenSource/combos.zip
Thanks again for the good work

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