Tab control-multiple cards or hidden groups?

[Peter M. Brigham]

On Nov 8, 2015, at 8:02 AM, Paul Dupuis wrote:

> On 11/8/2015 7:27 AM, James Hale wrote:
>> Recently there was some discussion concerning the use of hidden groups with the tab control. An app I am working on currently uses a tab control with five tabs that currently go to different cards. The cards concerned all share a number of other controls responsible for about 60% of their area with the tabbed panel taking the rest. Some of the panels are simply variations of another (e.g. Simple vs complex search).
>> I am now wondering whether there would be an advantage in reducing these five cards down to one and use the hidden group method.
>> Given I am not starting from scratch my question is, would there be advantages to me in making this transition?
>> So for those of you employing this method, why do you?
>> Is it having a single card script?
>> Is it keeping the stack structure simple?
>> Is it...?
>> I would be very interested in your thoughts.
>> 
> 
> I use a single card and multiple groups when the majority of the UI is
> (or will be) the same - i.e there would be a lot of common controls on
> different cards
> 
> I use multiple cards when the UI for each card is substantially different.
> 
> So it is basically a linear scale with tabbed groups being on one end
> where there a lot of common UI elements and tabbed cards being on the
> other end with little common UI elements. Where the dividing line is is
> probably a matter of personal preference. Organization of handlers plays
> a role in the choice as well. Recently, I have been leaning more towards
> multiple groups as I find accessing the objects and scripts in the IDE
> via the Application Browser a bit easier.

I do the same. If you go with the multiple groups/one card solution, an easy way of managing the clicks in the tab button is something like this:

on showGroup tGroup
   put "group1,group2,group3,group4" into gpList
   repeat for each item i in gpList
      set the visible of group i to (i = tGroup)
   end repeat
end showGroup

and if the group names are the same as the tab labels, it's quite straightforward:

on menuPick pItemName
   showGroup pItemName
end menuPick

-- Peter

Peter M. Brigham
pmbrig at gmail.com
http://home.comcast.net/~pmbrig