I'm opening popups (subclass of TitleWindow) in Flex by using
PopUpManager.createPopUp(parent, TrainCard)
Is there any way I can get a list of popups that are open? Or do I need to keep my own list?
I need to make sure I'm not opening the same popup twice.
The ISystemManager.popUpChildren property might be what you're looking for, PopUpManager will add the popup there. You can access the application ISystemManager via any component's systemManager property.
Related
The customer I am working for wants to display popup in an AIR application (designed in Flex 4).I will therefore use TitleWindow and PopupManager for this (or NativeWindow could be an option too).
Pretty basic, I can handle this.
Trouble is, this customer would like this popup to be looking as a Fancybox, that is, with the close button, slightly out of the popup.
Do you know how to do this ?
Easy enough. Just create a custom skin based for your TitleWindow which you can then change the appearance and location of the close button (among other things). The setup is fairly straightforward, but you should look up how to skin in Flex 4.
I'm using the PopUpManager to bring a bunch of event windows up.
I want to make it so that only one window can be open at a time, but I don't see anywhere in the code that tracks open windows to set up a conditional. I guess it just creates the windows and then sets them free?
Thinking about a windowCount variable that increments when I add a window and decrements when I remove one, but since the PopupManager is called in different classes I'd have to start throwing events all over the place. I can do that, but I'm wondering if there's a more straightforward method?
The systemManager (rather than PopUpManager, go figure...) provides information on the currently opened popup windows.
If your popups are all model then you will be interested in 'systemManager.numModalWindows':
The number of modal windows. Modal
windows don't allow clicking in
another windows which would normally
activate the FocusManager in that
window. The PopUpManager modifies this
count as it creates and destroys modal
windows.
Otherwise try out 'systemManager.popUpChildren':
An list of the topMost (popup) windows
being parented by this ISystemManager.
An ISystemManager has various types of
children, such as the Application,
popups, tooltips, and custom cursors.
You can access the top-most windows
through the popUpChildren property.
The IChildList object has methods like
getChildAt() and properties like
numChildren. For example,
popUpChildren.numChildren gives the
number of topmost windows and you can
access them as
popUpChildren.getChildAt(i).
I see a few options:
1) Make all your windows modal; so that the application can't be used until the window is closed. This is a argument to the createPopUp method on the PopUpManager. Presumably you do not have Popups creating other popups.
2) Create your own Manager class, possibly an extension of the PopUpManager class that keeps track of all open windows. Then you'd have a single source of all PopUps and could maintain them that way.
What is the best way to do a loader in a flex application? I have an animated .gif that is to be used as our loader (whenever I need to wait for an action to complete), and I am not sure the best way to do it.
This is how I am thinking:
Have the loader be a custom component.
On the parent application, add an event listener for my custom event AceEvent.SHOW_LOADER.
In the event listener, use the PopUpManager to show the loader.
Listen for AceEvent.HIDE_LOADER.
Get rid fo the loader via PopUpManager.
What do you think about this? Is there a better way to do it?
Thanks!
Andrew
Well, last I checked, animated gifs don't work in Flex unless you have a workaround. Still, I wouldn't use an animated gif to create an animation because of their low quality. I would just recreate it using Flash.
The way I would do the loader however would be very different. personally, I don't believe in 'system loaders' unless it's your application's preloader. The reason for this is that there could be more than one thing loading at the same time (which might not know about each other) which means that the loader popup could disappear before everything is loaded (first one loads, dispatches event and removes popup, while the other is still loading).
What I like to do is create a custom component for the popup loader (since it will be reused quite a bit) and from there I can either use states the are appropriate for my view or have a boolean flag binded to show the popup when true (this can easily be done using frameworks like Parsley). The popup would only cover the part of the system that's actually loading data (since I doubt that your whole app is loading data at the same time) which makes for a better UX.
I ended up using as3gif (until I can get this recreated as a .swf). The way I do this is by using my custom event class (AceEvent.SHOW_LOADER and AceEvent.HIDE_LOADER), which bubbles up to the top. I then use the PopUpManager to add/remove this with modal to disable the application.
When a user clicks a button, I need a separate browser window to popup. How can I set the modal property of the application? (ie, when a popup window opens, the main application is disabled until that popup is closed ... I need to use a browser window rather than a popup window, but can't figure out how to disable the main application)
PopUpManager.createPopUp (this, navigateToURL( url, "http://www.google.com" ) , true );
thanks!
[[Updated Answer]]
Ok, my modal dialog looks like so:
cg = mx.managers.PopUpManager.createPopUp(this, ChoiceGrid, true) as ChoiceGrid;
PopUpManager.centerPopUp(cg);
But, what I would do instead of what you're asking, is embed an IFrame in the modal popup. This is exactly what we're doing in our app to collect CC data (well, not the popup part, just the IFrame bit. http://code.google.com/p/flex-iframe/
This way, you have the standard modal dialog you're looking for, AND an internally managed 'view' out to your checkout server. Something like this:
<code:IFrame id="iFrameWithJSfunctions"
src="{checkoutURL}" />
The flex-iframe is pretty easy to work with, for the most part. You shouldn't have many problems with it.
[[Original Answer]]
I'm not sure you need a PopUp to do this.
Why don't you simply do:
navigateToURL(urlRequest,"_blank");
instead?
You should think of a Flex App as a self contained entity. The PopUpManager is designed to create Windows (Panels / any UIComponent) that reside over another component inside the SWF. It does not create items that pop up out of the SWF or in new browser windows.
navigateToURL could be used to create a HTML pop-up from your Flex application. However, there is very little--if any--communication between the SWF and the browser pop up. And there is no way to make a modal pop-up.
You might investigate performing an ExternalInterface call and creating your new pop up in JavaScript. Here is an article about creating modal windows in JavaScript. Before going too far down that road, I would think carefully about your requirements. How would feel if one browser window popped open another browser window and prevented you from doing any browsing until you addressed the issues in that window. Or to put it another way, how would you feel if Microsoft Word opened a word document and wouldn't let you edit any other document until you shut down the first one? I'd be pretty upset.
Modal application dialogs are one thing. And the PopUpManager allows you to create those. I would consider Model application windows a bad UI decision.
I'm trying to launch a popup window from Flex, but the popup window needs to have certain properties as one can usually specify with the JavaScript window.open. For example, the popup window should not have a browser toolbar or URL box.
I've tried using navigateToURL, which works fine, but I can't find a way to specify the popup window properties.
I've tried using ExternalInterface.call, but the popup gets blocked when calling window.open directly, or even creating a custom JS function that calls window.open.
Help!
Thanks!
I don't think it's even possible to disable the browser toolbar or URL box in a lot of browsers (I certainly do not allow it on any of the browsers I use).
If you're using navigateToURL, why can't the page you're opening run the JS to try to disable the toolbar and URL? I think you can also attach attributes to the URL if you wanted to send properties over.
You can use PopUpManager class of Flex for creating custom pop up box.
This example may help you. Custom PopUp
Check out AndrewT's blog about checking for popup blockers.
If not blocked, then use ExternalInterface; otherwise use the flex popup.
Detecting Popup Blockers
Or better yet, use SWFAddress v2.3 (javascript and AS3) modules. The AS3 has SWFAddress::popup() facade that proxies the poup call to the javascript. You can modify the SWFAdress.js popup function to use Andrew's logic and return a status. This would be a best practice: leveraging superlative SWFAddress library from flex for deeplinking, google analytics, and popups.