Using 'the backdrop'

[Graham Samuel]

In order to concentrate the minds of my users (schoolchildren), I  
have been using a do-it-yourself version of the backdrop idea which  
involves calculating the available screen real estate on the target  
machine. I recently tried to switch to the inbuilt Revolution way of  
doing this, using 'set the backdrop to <color>' but it seems to me  
not to work in a very cross-platform way (I'm talking about Macs and  
PCs, not Unix).

On the Mac, I still get the menuBar, and the dock swings into view  
when the mouse gets to the bottom of the screen; but on the PC, the  
whole screen gets covered, including the dock-like thing at the  
bottom of the screen (I can never remember what this is called -  
maybe it's the taskbar), with the result that you can't get back to  
the PC desktop without quitting the RunRev standalone.

Both these schemes have their advantages, but the key issue is that  
they don't provide the same user experience on the different  
platforms. I wondered how other people use 'the backdrop' in cross- 
platform situations?

Graham


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Graham Samuel / The Living Fossil Co. / UK and France