Usng an image to "disable" a group

[Peter Haworth]

Hi Scott,
Yes, it's a little difficult to explain.

Basically I'm trying to block access to groups on a card until allowed by
script. Right now, I do it by disabling/enabling the groups when
appropriate.  That works just fine but I was trying to find a better way to
visually indicate that a group is disabled instead of the faded grey color
that LC uses.

Exporting a snapshot of each of these groups it their enabled state,
positioning them over the groups and showing/hiding them is how I'm trying
to handle it but I had hoped to be able to change the background color of
the image to indicate the group is disabled.

At this point, I don't think it's worth the effort to pursue this any
further so I'll go back to disabling/enabling the groups.



The card has three groups on it, each with various controls in it, field,
buttons, etc.  Currently, when the card opens, the first group is enabled
and the other two are disabled.  The user fills in data in the first group,
and clicks on a button that adds the data to a database.  At that point the
second group is enabled and the user fills in data in that one, clicks a
button to add it to the database and the third group is enabled.  So
basically just controlling the order in which data is entered.

That all works fine right now but I don't particularly like the way a
disabled group looks and since there doesn't seem to be any way to control
that, I started down this path of trying to use graphics and images to do
it (and wish I hadn't :-).

I ruled out a graphic because it doesn't block users from typing into any
field controls there might be in the group.  Unless it's opaque of course
but then the user can't even see that there's a group there.

I've been working with a snapshot image of the second and third groups
positioned over the top of them and that does indeed stop the user from
doing anything with those groups until the image is removed.  However,
other than the user not being to use any controls in the group, there's no
visual indication that the group is "disabled" and that's what I was hoping
to achieve by somehow setting a background color/blendlevel of the image
but it seems setting the backgroundcolor of an image has no effect.  I
tried all the other colors in the Property Inspector for the graphic but
non of them affect it's background

Pete
lcSQL Software <http://www.lcsql.com>
Home of lcStackBrowser <http://www.lcsql.com/lcstackbrowser.html> and
SQLiteAdmin <http://www.lcsql.com/sqliteadmin.html>

On Sun, Sep 21, 2014 at 4:52 PM, Scott Rossi <scott at tactilemedia.com> wrote:

> Hey Pete:
>
> It sounds like there's some detail missing here.  I haven't followed all
> the posts on this, but from what you described, it shouldn't matter if
> whatever you're capturing has a background or not.  If you're capturing
> multiple overlaid objects, you should either be capturing a snapshot of
> the group of all the objects, or from the card so all the objects appear
> composited together.
>
> Are you intentionally trying to leave gaps in the snapshot?  If not, a
> capture of the card should work.
>
> Regards,
>
> Scott Rossi
> Creative Director
> Tactile Media, UX/UI Design
>
>
>
>
> On 9/21/14 3:44 PM, "Peter Haworth" <pete at lcsql.com> wrote:
>
> >Hi Eric,
> >I tried that but the image has no background color so changing the
> >blending
> >doesn't change it's appearance (the underlying group just shows through).
> >
> >Using a snapshot would work great if I could just find a way to change the
> >background color of the resulting image but there doesn't appear to be a
> >way to do that.
> >
> >
>
>
>
> _______________________________________________
> use-livecode mailing list
> use-livecode at lists.runrev.com
> Please visit this url to subscribe, unsubscribe and manage your
> subscription preferences:
> http://lists.runrev.com/mailman/listinfo/use-livecode
>