I would like to know if there is a way to programmatically arrange desktop windows similar to Expose in Cocoa.
The best I can think of off the top of my head is this (somewhat clumsy, and doesn't continue to show moving content, but should work):
Draw the contents of each of your windows to images
Create new windows showing those images (set to scale with window resizing), and hide your old
Calculate the new positions for each window (a first approximation would be to scale them all to the same size, then tile them)
Call -setFrame:animate: on all of them
Alternately, the same trick but instead of using real windows, make one screen-sized transparent window and move CALayers around in it.
Good luck! This is definitely a tricky thing to do well.
Related
I'm trying to build a game that uses a concept from the known game "The Sims". Right now I'm building the AI for a 3d Character, and I need the player to be able to tell where the character should go or do. I want to know the best ways to create a pop up menu with animations, kind of to show some choices, so that when the player clicks over the 3d Character he can pick wherever he wants to do. I know this must be using UI elements under a Canvas that's placed over the player. However I can not have 2 Canvas in a Scene and I don't know how to fix them to the character so that it moves with him. Thanks in advance.
Here you can see what I mean, this is the Sims Game
You have two main approaches here:
1) Use a world space UI.
2) Use a screen space UI and position it in real time using a worldspace to screen space transformation.
Both of these topics will expand substantially when you approach them, so it's not possible to give any more specifics from here.
Having played the Sims a bit before though, I would suggest you use a world space UI system if you're chasing the same style as them.
You can have as many canvases as you want. To control levels of canvases (which one is on top) you use "Order in Layer" parameter in "Canvas" component of your chosen Canvas. The lower the number is the higher interactivity and visibility your canvas has.
You can create one canvas ant parent it to you character. AS the canvas will be smaller your should play with these parameters to get the resolution you want (don't over do it):
To make canvas always facing the camera you should give Canvas a new script, with a command:
canvas.transform.LookAt(camera.transform);
To control canvas' visibility you may use this code line:
canvas.enabled = bool;
Where bool is false when you want to hide it and bool is true when you want to show it.
In the "Sims" the visibility comes with animation which you may do also, but I would leave it after I did all the functionality.
We need to overlay a target window with a custom shape and tracks the position of the target window such that the overlay drawing always appears above it. Also, the overlay drawing should appear in screenshots taken using BitBlt or PrintClient by screen-capturing tools like Camtasia, Debut, etc. Also, moving the target window around should not leave traces of the drawing at earlier location. The target window is not made using our code.
So far we've tried several ways but each method has its problems:
1) Layered Window:
Using a layered window as the child/owned window of the target window is the easiest thing and it works. But the problem is on Windows 7 and XP, layered windows do not appear in a BitBlt done without the CAPTUREBLT flag and the screen-capturing tools may call BitBlt without the flag, thereby skipping our window from the capture.
2) Region Window:
The crude approach to support all Windows versions then is to use a region window using SetWindowRgn and make the target window its owner. However, region windows are generally very slow in rendering complex shapes and also impact the performance of other windows, sometimes to the point of freezing the application. Region window also leaves traces on dragging the application window.
3) Subclassing and Drawing on HDC:
Another approach is to sub-class the target window and draw the shape on its HDC on the OnPaint() event inside the window procedure hook. The shape can be drawn on the desktop window instead too. The problem is that applications may draw without a paint event, like when some text is selected using the cursor, and such drawing may erase a part of the custom drawing. Tracking all possible paint events is not a good way to do this.
4) Drawing continuously in a timer:
The last resort is to draw the custom shape on the target window in a timer continuously so the drawing is always above the target, even on text selection. But this may show a bit of flicker when the text is selected. Not to mention, it is very performance heavy to draw constantly.
Question
What is the best way to achieve an overlay drawing which works on all Windows versions (since XP) at the same time appearing in screen-captures. We've exhausted all approaches. Is there some method I'm missing? Can the above mentioned ways be used with some improvement? Is DirectX an option? I'm looking for methods with fast rendering capacity to achieve this. Appreciate any help!
I think the best solution to draw an overlay window, is to use a double-buffered technique GDI, just like in this example:
Overlay Drawing in CScrollView
I have myself the same task, and the only solution was that one. Hope it help you.
I'm using Vista, my old Java app ran on Win XP has thin borders, about 2 pixels thick, but now on Vista, the borders deafults to thick lines, maybe 6,7 pixels thick, can I specify in Java how thick my JFrame borders should be ?
By default borders are handled by the native windowing system. But in the JFrame API there is a method setDefaultLookAndFeelDecorated(boolean). It says that if set to true and if the current look and feel supports it, it will use the look and feel to draw the borders, title and buttons. I haven't ever tried this, since I don't know which look and feels support decoration. The first thing would be to find one that does, then set that via the UIManager or command-line -Ddefault.laf argument, and turn on look and feel decoration via the JFrame method.
If you use this option though, you'll probably get non-standard looking window decoration. Given the little bits of Vista eye candy (glow on hover over the buttons and the translucent title bar), are you sure you want to do that?
Another option is to use the JFrame.setUndecorated(boolean) method and handle rendering of borders, title bar, etc. yourself, but that's probably even more difficult.
I've been banging my head about this seemingly easy task and I could really use some help.
I have a wide Image loaded in the gui (using the designer..) and I want to be able to draw only a portion of it, a rectangle.
I need to be able to change this rectangle position over the large image, in order to draw a different part of the larger image at will. In this process the rect must maintain its size.
Using the Ui::MainWindow object I'm able to access the label holding the image and a solution that involves using this option is preferred (in order to keep up with the rest of the code I've already written )
Any solution will be much appreciated :)
Thanks,
Itamar
I would definitely (for ease of use) just place an empty label as placeholder in Designer.
Then implement the paintEvent for this label (delegate it to your own method). You'll have also have to look into QPainter, QPixMap, etc... Should be doable based on these hints and the documentation.
If you want more, I suggest you provide a small code snippet to work upon.
If you want to do this more or less purely through designer, you could put a QScrollArea where you want the portion of the image to appear. If you set the scroll area's scrollbar policy to be never shown, you can then manually change what part is visible via the scroll area widget. However, this would probably be more complex that creating a derived widget and reimplementing the paint function.
I would like to create an effect than an image zooms up from a thumbnail size to full screen.
I am not sure what's the right steps to achieve this. Should I create a transparent full screen window and animate a layer on top of it?
Take a look at this CoreGraphics example. Specifically, take a look at the "grow" and "shrink" animations. That's how Apple does it, and that's what you'll want to do too.
Your solution of a transparent window with a CALayer inside is probably the best supported way to do it.
One thing that seems like it should be a good solution (at least it's the first thing I thought of when I wanted to do this) but isn't is NSView's enterFullScreenMode:withOptions:. If memory serves, it was originally meant to do what you're talking about here, but the animation was taken out and it generally doesn't work that well now.