Help with nested (?) behaviors

[Scott Rossi]

Hi Klaus:

One reason to use a chained behavior is when you want to make some
actions, functions, or properties common to multiple object behaviors.
This new arrangement is ideal for custom controls.  For example, say you
created a custom button, a custom field, and a custom scrollbar that all
share a common appearance: a "specialBorder" property that draws a blue
outline around each control.

Now, of course each of these controls behaves quite differently from the
others -- they perform different functions, so each one uses its own
behavior script.  But, in terms of appearance, they all share the
"specialBorder" property.  So instead of placing a specialBorder property
setting in each object's behavior, you could place the specialBorder
setting in ONE parent behavior for ALL object behaviors.


The benefit of this arrangement is that if you later want to change the
specialBorder settings for all objects from blue to red, you only need to
change it one place: the parent behavior.  With the old setup, the
specialBorder property would need to live in each object's behavior, and
you would need to update that property separately for each control.  Kind
of a pain.

The additional benefit of chained behaviors is the message flow is
"natural" -- mouse events automatically flow from one object to the next
without you needing to manually call some handler or retrieve code from
another object.

In my own development, I place some custom geometry functions in parent
behaviors that are available to all my custom control behaviors, so if
(when) the time comes to update the functions, I only need to change code
in one place.  And then all my custom controls will be automatically
updated at once.

The above is quite a simple example, but hope it helps.


Regards,

Scott Rossi
Creative Director
Tactile Media, UX/UI Design




On 8/23/13 5:24 AM, "Klaus major-k" <klaus at major-k.de> wrote:

>Hi friends,
>
>I must confess that I still have no idea about the practical use of
>nested behaviors, but maybe they will fit in my current scenario?
>
>1. I have a couple of groups and set their behavior to button A.
>
>2. Now I want to switch their behaviors under certain conditons
>
>No big deal with some lines of script, but maybe this is possible
>without setting the new behaviors for ALL groups with nested behaviors?
>
>3. I set the behvior of button A ( see above) to button B
>
>4. the groups are still "connected" to button A
>
>5. Now I only switch the behavior of button B and all groups
>"connected" to button A have a new behavior at once.
>
>Know what I mean? Is my presumption correct?
>
>Thanks a lot in advance!
>
>
>P.S.
>I would be nice if there were some practical examples for new and
>maybe a tad "esoteric" (= not intuitive) features ;-)
>
>
>Best
>
>Klaus
>--
>Klaus Major
>http://www.major-k.de
>klaus at major-k.de
>
>
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