Popup Menu - Show on mouse over

[Jan Schenkel]

Recently, Simon Forster asked:

> On Tuesday, October 15, 2002, at 12:31 PM, Jan
> Schenkel wrote:
> 
> >   on mouseEnter
> >     popup me
> >   end mouseEnter
>
> Jan
> 
> Many thanks. Next series of questions if I may:
>
> - How do I "hide" the popup on mouseLeave?
> 
> [snip]

Hi Simon,

As Sarah already answered your other questions, I'll
focus on your first question.

It seems the 'popup' command suppresses any and all
messages until a selection is made or the escape
button is pressed or the user clicks elsewhere.

Rather inconvenient, as you can't hie it on
mouseLeave. I remembered under HyperCard 1.2.5 one
could emulate menus, without an XFCN.

The trick? Show a field and handle all the appropriate
messages so that things are selected. Here's the
recipe for your own popup show/hide routine.

- Make a new field "myPopUpField" and put the lines of
your popup-menu in there.

- Resize it so everything fits snuggly.

- In the properties window, make sure the field has a
fixed line height, and fill it in (e.g. 12).

- Also make sure it has list-field behaviour.

- Now set its script to:

  on mouseMove pX, pY
    put the textHeight of me into tHeight
    put pY - (the top of me) + (item 1 of the \
      margins of me) into tY
    put (tY DIV tHeight) into tLine
    if tLine = 0 then put 1 into tLine
    do ("set the hilitedLines of me to" && quote & \
      tLine & quote)
  end mouseMove

  on mouseLeave
    hide me
  end mouseLeave

  on mouseUp
    -- check the hilitedLines prop and do things
    -- ...
    -- hide the field after you're done handling it
    hide me
  end mouseUp

- To make it all work, set the script of the button
where you want the user to mouse over, to:

  on mouseEnter
    show field "myPopUpField"
  end mouseEnter

  on mouseLeave
    if the mouseLoc is not within the rect of field \
      "myPopUpField" then hide field "myPopUpField"
  end mouseLeave

It's an old trick revamped for RunRev ; but it's a
great workaround for the popup command.

Hope this helped,

Jan Schenkel.

=====
"As we grow older, we grow both wiser and more foolish at the same time."  (La Rochefoucauld)

__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Faith Hill - Exclusive Performances, Videos & More
http://faith.yahoo.com