I want my custom button to look like the button sample below.
More specifically, I want the width of the button to be determined by the width of the largest word in the label (i.e. width of "Elongated" in my example). The label must wrap, not truncate.
And I want only one pixel between the top edge of the icon and my button's top edge.
I have tried lots of things but to no avail so far. I have reduced the horizontalGap and verticalGap to zero and padding to zero. But still nothing. Please help.
Here's what I have right now:
<mx:Button top="0" cornerRadius="2" paddingLeft="0" paddingRight="0" leading="0" letterSpacing="0" paddingTop="0" paddingBottom="0" verticalGap="0" horizontalGap="0" textAlign="center" labelPlacement="bottom" icon="{MyIcon}" height="60" width="75" label="Elongated Label" fontSize="10" />
That's not at all simple.
You will need to create your own button,
public class Mybutton extends Button {...}
override createChildren and set the word wrap of the IUITextField used for the label to true.
override measure and use your own line metrics to determine the width that the button should be. If you get the measure right, the button will lay itself out properly.
I don't have a dev environment in front of me at the moment, but something along these lines should work:
Set truncateToFit property of the Label to false (OR use a TextField with wordWrap set to true - I think this should keep the words together as much as possible).
I haven't had the need to use any of the above yet, and hopefully you haven't tried them yet because it would be an easy solution to a part of your problem. Without any code, I'm not sure why padding didn't work, but maybe it's something to do with the word truncation.
As an alternative, why not use a Button, embed or specify a source for your icon and decide where to place the text by specifying the object's labelPlacement property?
EDIT: Since there's no property in Button about wordWrap, as they would recommend in the Adobe Flex forums for such questions regarding sizing based on content where there is no automatic feature to do that, you have to find the longest word and adjust the width of the button (i.e.: in the creationComplete event). Experimenting to find the font to pixel ratio would be my best bet (or you can use a Monospace font where all the characters are given the same space thereby simplifying the estimation):
creationComplete="event.target.width=returnMyWidth();"
As for the padding, it may be related to the custom width that you had set or it may be from embedding the image automatically setting a padding by being included - I'm not really sure, so it would be good if someone can offer a comment based on experience with this.
Related
here is my CSS for textInput
s|TextInput{
skinClass: ClassReference("spark.skins.mobile.TextInputSkin");
contentBackgroundColor:#FFFFFF;
focusAlpha:0;
showPromptWhenFocused:false;
}
and I use simple:
<s:TextInput id="id1" />
<s:TextInput id="id1" height="40" />
<s:TextInput id="id1" height="60 />
On iphone/ipad: the close icon appears top cropped:
Any idea how to fix that ? (or even how to remove that X icon) ?
The icon is a set height and, at least in Flex, doesn't adjust its size. The cropping is from the height of the textfield (read: not the TextInput component, but the actual field the text goes in). Because that field is not as tall as the icon, the icon gets cropped.
There are two solutions:
The obvious one is to increase the height on the TextInput field until that icon is no longer cropped. You could just take your screenshot and measure out the pixels being cropped, if you want.
You get that icon because TextInput uses StageText. StageText uses native text rendering as opposed to Flash text rendering. In ideal situations, StageText is perfect. However, the situation is rarely ideal. To get around this, you simply apply the mobile TextInput skin skinClass="spark.skins.mobile.TextInputSkin" to your TextInput component(s). As www.Flextras.com pointed out to me yesterday, this reverts the TextInput back to its behavior prior to Flex 4.6, which introduced StageText.
Either one of those solutions should work for you. You just need to choose which is best. I prefer Option #2 because, as I mentioned, there are other issues with StageText (such as getting displayAsPassword to function correctly) that switching to that skin fixes
I would try editing the skin, because that is where the icon crop is happening
In general, I haven't yet found a definitive way to get Flex and Spark containers to size themselves relative to their children. I have searched for good documentation for this concept many times but have yet to find anything that sufficiently explains the concepts.
A simple example of something I often want to do is to draw a border uniformly around a set of controls.
The goal here would be to have all UI elements to size themselves automatically.
<s:BorderContainer>
<s:HGroup>
<s:Label text="l1" />
<s:Label text="very long label 2" />
</s:HGroup>
</s:BorderContainer>
I would want the Labels to size themselves based on the text property, and the HGroup should be as big as needed to contain labels and BorderContainer should only just contain that HGroup.
Now this simple example may or may not work as desired, I haven't yet figured out how to determine what the output will look like without trying the code. Does anyone know of a good way to understand this process so I can know deterministically how things will look?
Now the more complicated example that I am working on now.
I have a class that extends the BorderContainer. Within the class I create an HGroup with 5 Labels as children of the HGroup. Then the HGroup is added as a child of the ExtendedBorderContainer (using addElement() method).
Then the new class is used in the application as:
<mx:ViewStack>
<s:NavigatorContent>
<my:ExtendedBorderContainer />
</s:NavigatorContent>
<!-- more NavigatorContents here -->
</mx:ViewStack>
I have tried various [max|min]height/width combinations and I can not get the desired layout, which is very tight borders around elements without extraneous space starting from the deepest Label children all the way up to the NavigatorContent.
Look here:
http://livedocs.adobe.com/flex/3/html/help.html?content=size_position_3.html
It is not clear what your problem is.
Regarding first part of your question: what do you mean saying "may or may not work as desired". This example should work and have layout that you described. Label sizes itself based on text property and so on. What behaviour do you get?
Second part:
If you are hinting that your layout is ok in general but have extra spacing between items then look at the padding and gap properties of containers. Some containers have non zero default padding and gap and you have to override them manualy.
In my flex app, I have a <mx:Text> control with a fixed height and width enough to show two lines. Now if the text is too long to be shown in two lines, I would like to have it truncated with showing ellipsis (...). The default truncation with ellipsis seems to be present with label, but label cannot show text in two lines.
How do I mimic this behavior in <mx:Text> control in flex? Thanks in advance!!!
The spark.components.Label component inherits the maxDisplayedLines property from spark.components.supportClasses.TextBase. Here is the help for that particular property:
An integer which determines whether, and where, the text gets truncated.
Truncating text means replacing excess text with a truncation indicator such as "...". The truncation indicator is locale-dependent; it is specified by the "truncationIndicator" resource in the "core" resource bundle.
If the value is 0, no truncation occurs. Instead, the text will simply be clipped if it doesn't fit within the component's bounds.
If the value is is a positive integer, the text will be truncated if necessary to reduce the number of lines to this integer.
If the value is -1, the text will be truncated to display as many lines as will completely fit within the height of the component.
Truncation is only performed if the lineBreak style is "toFit"; the value of this property is ignored if lineBreak is "explicit".
The default value is 0.
From this we can see that if you set the maxDisplayedLines property to -1, the component will display as much text as it can, and append the "..." if it had to truncate the text.
It so happens that the Text class in Flex 3 is a subclass of Label. Which means setting "truncateToFit" property on your Text control to true should be enough.
The best solution I've found is via the spark Label and the maxDisplayedLines property, like so:
<mx:Canvas xmlns:mx="http://www.adobe.com/2006/mxml" xmlns:s="library://ns.adobe.com/flex/spark" >
<s:Label text="{data.Name}" maxDisplayedLines="3" verticalAlign="middle" />
</mx:Canvas>
Worked perfectly for me.
In general I've found the spark Label to be better than the mx Label, but YMMV.
I know this is an old post, but lots of people still developing and maintaining mixed Spark/MX projects. So I will give my two cents for people that are still facing this problem, specially when using MX lists and datagrids and in need of a multiline truncation in the renderer.
As far as I can tell, the question is about MX components, using Spark would be a good choice, but only if possible.
So, in case a "s:Label" is not a choice, I would think that the best approach is to extend the MX Label component and set its textField's multiline property to true. That should do the trick, I'd first try adding that logic in the override of the updateDisplayList method.
I have a blog post on this topic here, that works well regardless of the version of Flex you are using:
http://www.tjdownes.com/post.cfm/easy-string-truncation-with-ellipsis-using-ternary-operators-in-as3
The short of it is this:
myString.slice(0, 150).concat(myString.length > 150 ? "..." : "");
This will truncate the string to 150 characters and if the string is longer than 150 characters it adds an ellipsis.
On flex 4 you need to set the Label#maxDisplayedLines to something above 0 and it will do the clipping for you.
See this to see how to customize the "..."
spark component Does have the trancion propert:#see.
http://blog.flexexamples.com/2009/06/15/determining-if-a-spark-simpletext-control-is-truncated-in-flex-4/
I see that Flex3 has a class called ApplicationControlBar dedicated to "holding components that provide global navigation and application commands." (quoted from the langref). The question is: is there an advantage of using this class instead of just adding a plain HBox with a greyish background, or is it just a matter of taste?
In my current code, I use the following box:
<mx:HBox verticalAlign="middle" horizontalGap="5" backgroundColor="0xCCCCCC"
width="100%" paddingTop="5" paddingRight="5" paddingBottom="5"
paddingLeft="5">
Granted, this requires explicitly specifying a few attributes, but other than that?
ApplicationControlBar is essentially an HBox with both scroll policies set to false and a transparent background. The only other feature it offers is the ability to be docked. From the Livedocs:
Docked mode: The bar is always at the top of the application's drawing area and becomes part of the application chrome. Any application-level scroll bars don't apply to the component, so that it always remains at the top of the visible area, and the bar expands to fill the width of the application. To create a docked bar, set the value of the dock property to true.
If you look at the source for ApplicationControlBar and Application.dockControlBar you'll see that when docked=true the bar is added to rawChildren instead of children which is what allows it to "ignore" scollbars and such.
In addition to the previous answer I can add, that it's possible to set the gradient background to the ApplicationControlBar, which is not allowed to the HBox, if you're not using the special border type, of course :)
But even with HBox you can still draw your own gradient background without setting the border style.
For loading time considerations I am using a runtime css file in my Flex Application.
I am having a problem with a multi line text control :
<mx:Text id="txtDescription" selectable="false"
styleName="imageRolloverButtonTextDark" width="100%" textAlign="center"
text="{_rolloverText}"/>
When my CSS stylesheet has loaded the text style correctly changes, but the height is not recalculated. It appears to be just a single line field.
FYI: The control is not actually visible, and triggered by a rollover. So I dont really care if the stylesheet hasnt loaded and they get standard system text. I jsut want it to be the correct height when it has been loaded.
Per the Adobe documentation for Text
Sizing a Text control
Flex sizes the
Text control as follows:
If you specify a pixel value for both
the height and width properties, any
text that exceeds the size of the
control is clipped at the border.
If you specify an explicit pixel
width, but no height, Flex wraps the
text to fit the width and calculates
the height to fit the required number
of lines.
If you specify a percentage-based
width and no height, Flex does not
wrap the text, and the height equals
the number of lines as determined by
the number of Return characters.
If you specify only a height and no
width, the height value does not
affect the width calculation, and Flex
sizes the control to fit the width of
the maximum line.
As a general rule, if you have long
text, you should specify a pixel-based
width property. If the text might
change and you want to ensure that the
Text control always takes up the same
space in your application, set
explicit height and width properties
that fit the largest expected text.
So the trick I've used to deal with this is to have the Text get its width via a binding expression from whatever container limits it's width, typically the immediate parent.
e.g.
<mx:Canvas id="box" width="100%" backgroundColor="Red">
<mx:Text width="{box.width}" text="{someReallyLongString}" />
</mx:Canvas>
For any one else who has this problem, The solution I found was to create a custom component extending the mx.controls.Text
and then override the styleChange() Method, and explicitly call the invalidateDisplayList() method for the text field once the style has been applied.
It should be called automatically when the styleis changed but no...for some reason in flex 3.5 it is not.
public class TextObject extends Text { //...
override public function styleChanged(styleProp:String):void { invalidateDisplayList(); }
}
Hope that save some one all the time I lost on it.
Could you use a fixed pixel width instead of 100%? I've had issues with 100% being wrongly calculated on dynamic text controls before.