Author: George Henne

Ever wish you could slide a list of options in from the left or right? How about a compete form? The new Panel control lets you do this. Have are some examples:

When you activate a Panel, it slides in from the left or right to cover your existing form. Click on a close panel button or outside the panel area, and it will slide closed.

Visual Effects

There are three visual effects. Set the one you want to use in the display property.

1. Overlay: The Panel is overlaid on top of the current form.
2. Push: The Panel pushes in, moving the current form with it.
3. Reveal: The Panel is revealed as the current form moves.

Formatting the Panel

There are two ways to load the contents of a Panel:

1. HTML: Set the text property at design time with the text you want to display. It can also be HTML format, so this would be valid:

   <h4>Important Info</h4>
   Remember to save your data before you leave this form!
   

   Then, at runtime, do the following to open the panel:

   Panel1.open()
   

2. Form or Container: Use the .open() function at runtime to open a Form or Container in the Panel. In this case, leave the text property blank, and open the panel as follows:

   Panel1.open(Form2)
   

Events
When you open a panel, NSB.currentForm is set to the panel, and the normal Form_open() and Form_close() events are run for the panel.

Clicking on any button on the panel, or outside the panel, will close it. You can also close the panel in code:

Panel1.close()

Full Screen Panels

If you set the width of the panel to 100%, it will take over the whole screen. That gives you the effect of having the new form slide in from the left or right.

AppStudio 5 lets you use visual effects on controls and forms. The new functions are:

• fadeIn(msecs): Fades a form or control in. msecs is milliseconds to take for the effect. A value of 2000 would be 2 seconds. The default is 500. It is the same as doing a ctrl.show() function or ctrl.style.display = “block”, with, but the visual effect.
• fadeOut(msecs): Fades a form or control out. It is the same as doing a ctrl.hide() function or ctrl.style.display = “none”, but with the visual effect.
• slideDown(msecs): Displays a form or control as if it slid down from the top. It is the same as showing, but with the visual effect.
• slideUp(msecs): Hides a form or control as if it slid up to the top. It is the same as hiding, but with the visual effect.

These effects will work on all controls: buttons, textboxes, containers, grids, etc.

Examples

Image1.fadeIn(1000)      'Take one second to fade an image in
Image1.slideUp()         'Hide the image by sliding it up
MessageForm.fadeIn(2000) 'Display a form called MessageForm over the current one.

ChangeForm
You can also use visual effects with the ChangeForm command. It has some new parameters:

ChangeForm(newForm[, hideEffect[, showEffect[, msecs]]])

If you just have the first parameter, ChangeForm will work as it always has. The current form will be hidden and the newForm will be displayed. hideEffect and showEffect can be “fade”, “slide” or “hide”. If you only supply only one effect (which looks best) the same effect will be used for hiding the old form and showing the new one. The last parameter is the time to take performing the effect.

Examples

Fade the current form out and fade in Form2:

ChangeForm(Form2, "fade")

Slide Form2 in. Take 1 second to fade out, 1 second to fade Form2 in:

ChangeForm(Form2, "slide", 1000) 

Hide Form1, then take 1 second to fade in Form2:

ChangeForm(Form2, "hide", "slide", 1000) 

Use ChangeForm instead of Form1.fadeOut() and Form2.fadeIn(). It’s easier, and your form’s close and open functions will be called.

As the number of samples that come with AppStudio ever increases, we wondered about ways to make to easier to find relevant samples. There are close to 200 of them now: something needed to be done.

Here’s the new Open Samples window for AppStudio 5:

We made two major changes: Samples are now organized into folders and subfolders. Looking for samples showing mobile device features? They’re in the Features folder, in a subfolder named Device Features.

There is also a search bar. Enter in what you are looking for, and it will look in the names and descriptions of the samples for matches.

Click on the sample you need and it will open.

When we were coming up with ideas for AppStudio 5, we looked at the blank Toolbox space beside the Code Window. Could we do something useful with it?

Yes, we could: We display a list of the functions and subroutines in the current Code Module, along with their calling arguments:

Plus, if you click on a function, it will go to it in your code. The items are sorted in alphabetic order, not in the order they actually appear in the code.

As a bonus, there are selections to go directly to the top or bottom of the page.

The Calculation control lets you display the result of a calculation without doing any coding. As the input values of the formula are changed, the value displayed in the control is automatically updated.

It’s much like a Label, in that it displays a simple text string. It has many of the same properties: font, alignment, etc. However, instead of a caption, it has a formula. Each time you enter a character on the screen, formula is reevaluated and the new result displayed.

Let’s have fun with some formulas:
Continue reading “Using the new Calculation control”