I'm trying to write an editor for game scenes. So far, I'm able to present results in a single window. However, I would like to have several "panes", for example for material properties or resources preview.
The good example would be Blender layout:
I know MFC and WinAPI, I wouldn't rather use Qt, since it's not free.
I did it on a commercial application and it works fine:
Create a Single Document application
Read about CDockablePane, then look into the MFC Feature Pack exanples.
Finally implement the CDockablePanes and their contents
Arrange them the way you want by docking them to your own CFrameWndEx-derived class.
Related
I'm using a VB6 application as a reference and have come across imgMain. I'm assuming its an image control, however, I cannot find the object on any of the forms. It's used to load the image. I'm just not sure what's going on with this. I'm assuming its an IMAGE CONTROL, but I cannot find this on any of the forms? it's mentioned a lot of times in teh application as it lets you view incoming faxes and stuff.
Without having a look on source code i assume It might be custom user control that was created for some reasons probably to extend basic picturebox control.
One thing i can advise you is to further inspect code and dig to code of this custom control. If code for this control is not available then see what methods and properties instances of that particular control uses and compare them with regular picturebox.
Im my application I want to implement the feature of when a user click on a button show a Panel which will consist of some user controls. I know In Java I can easily use Jpanel and use setVisible() method to get this done easily. But this is an MFC application. I couldn't find any built or customized component that I can use for my purpose.
I also tried GroupBox. But it is not grouping the components logically.
What would be the best approach for this?
As user1793036 says, start by creating a dialog resource and CDialog derived class for the panel. In the dialog resource properties turn off the Title Bar style. In the code call Create for the dialog and then SetWindowPos to place it where you want it to appear.
MFC is nothing but a thin wrapper over Win32 API for windows and controls. The core Win32 API doesn't provide any feature to group controls in a group-box or panel. One way is to have a window and make that window parent of all required controls. Unfortunately, this isn't easy to do.
I suggest you, since you are learning, to drop the idea. Instead, learn what you can achieve with existing set of features provided by MFC/Win32. With MFC/Win32, you would, mostly need to derive/subclass a class/window to get something fancy (such as colored list-control).
I have been using Balsamiq to create mockups for a new application. It has been working very well initially, but now it feels like the application is becoming to large for Balsamiq.
I have connected many Balsamiq screens with the link function in Balsamiq. But that forces me to create way too many screens. Every click makes me create a completely new screen. So if I want to change a button that I am using on many linked screens, then I have to change all of them.
Is there a different application for creating mockups that doesn't force me to create new mockups for every click? I don't know exactly what I'm looking for but maybe something where only parts of the mockup application change when I click on a link?
There is also no functionality in Balsamiq for maintaining my mockups in a structure. Maybe that would help as well. What I'm looking for in essence is an application that let's me mockup more complex applications with many clicks and pages.
WireframeSketcher is a wireframe tool that has projects and lets you organize mockups in directories. It's based on Eclipse IDE and so it shares the same advanced way of organizing files. WireframeSketcher also supports refactoring which makes it easy to move files around or rename them without breaking links.
Look into using "symbols" in Balsamiq, that may help you out some. What you can do is take any group and make it a symbol. Then you can use the symbols on multiple pages. If you want to change the button in multiple places, all you have to do is change the symbol once, and the changes will be carried out throughout the rest of your design. Hope that helps.
MockupScreens has "master screens", similar to master slides in PowerPoint. You do create new screens technically, but you don't do them from scratch.
Since they derive most of their content from the master, you edit only the differences: value in some field, for example.
(I am m.screens developer)
I want to build an OS X application, in which one of the requirements is for the user to be able to generate PDF output according to a layout that they, the user, will create. Typical items on the page would be things like a corporate logo (a JPEG or PNG), an address (a block of text) and a narrative (another block of text).
I'd like the user to be able to move and resize the items using the mouse to drag handles around on-screen.
Is there an Interface Builder object that will let me do that, or some third-party library that exists for this purpose?
Try GCDrawKit if you're looking for a drop-in solution. It's still in beta (and has been for ages) but you might find it useful.
You seem to be looking for an all-encompassing, self-contained "Pages" control or some sort of reporting suite. That's asking a bit much.
There is nothing in the Cocoa frameworks that gives you this. Unfortunately, there's no Cocoa equivalent of Crystal Reports either. You'll have to roll your own.
I suggest using standard CSS / HTML templates with WebKit. The only drawback is WebKit doesn't yet support CSS pagination, so there's no concept of "8.5"x11" page 1...15" but it's the closest you'll come without writing your own Pages application (NOT an easy project by any stretch of the imagination).
I talked to a friend of mine and he told me that it's possible to create an image in an image editor (gimp/photoshop) and then use it as a button . He said that's the way applications that have great GUIs do it.
He also said that there is a file describing which parts of the image make up the button.
Is this possible , or is he "crazy"? :)
This needs to be clarified with a language of choice, etc. In general, most languages (WinForms, Java AWT/SWT, etc) have an image or background image property that allows you to use images for buttons. There are even skinning frameworks that will let you use images for all controls in an easy-to-define manner.
If you are talking about HTML, there is a button input type that can allow an image to be used as a button for a form.
#Vhaerun
CodeProject is a good place to find lots of skinning libraries. I used this one a long time ago. Winamp is a great example of a skinned application, where users can actually create their own templates to completely change the look of the application without changing code whatsoever. Actually, most media players have some sort of skinning available.
You can do anything, especially since you have no constraints re language, environment, etc.
No he is not crazy, you can use images on almost all GUI tools instead of buttons, they are generally an image on the button, or in some cases you can put the image on the screen and have an onclick event assigned to it.
You haven't been very specific with your question so nobody is able to give you a definitive answer, but here's an attempt to do so without demeaning you:
It's quite common for graphics designers (using tools like photoshop, gimp, etc.) to participate alongside developers for both desktop and web based applications. Web based applications can easily capture information about when an image is clicked and frequently people will either design the button with the text in the image file itself, or use background pictures/borders with plain text on top. There is not standard, per se, on how this is accomplished on the web, but plenty of sites serve as an example (try using Firebug with FireFox to inspect other sites and see how they do things).
If the circumstance at hand is desktop oriented then the answer becomes much more complicated. Skinning is accomplished in many way and, depending on platforms and libraries being used, implementation specifics vary greatly. In it's most simple terms, most GUI frameworks (like GTK, QT, Windows Forms, Windows Presentation Foundation) include a basic picture control, and this control can usually process a "Click" event, which would allow it to function as a button, but if you want different states (pressed, disabled, etc.) you will have to invest more effort in such a thing; you also won't find this method suitable for replacing the rendering of all buttons in an application, but rather something you would do manually for each one, or write your own custom button control that uses your assets specifically.
In terms of a file describing different images that combine as described in the file to override the rendering of the button this would lead me to believe you are either working with an already existent application that is skinable (like Firefox or Winamp) or that he is speaking of some specific UI toolkit. I'm not aware of this functionality being generally available in most of the common system-level UI toolkits.
In the future you may wish to be more specific with your questions.
In HTML, you could do:
<input type="button" src="/path/to/image.png" />
Alternately, assigning an onclick event to an image causes that image to work similarly to a button:
<img src="/path/to/image.png" onclick="function(){doSomething();}" />
If you're talking HTML you can use <input type="image" src="myfile.png" />
Specifications here
Imagemaps I guess.
No seperate file describes the map, it is all part of the html document.
http://www.w3schools.com/TAGS/tag_map.asp