Emphasizing selected buttons

[BDennis]

I�m making up an application which will use many buttons, probably on tabbed forms.
So far, I don�t see a way of increasing the emphasis on the marking of the selected button before it will be pressed; is there a way of altering this, maybe changing color/border/etc? It can be done with the tabs; but the buttons on the tabbed form seem to have only one, not very definite, change.

Basically on the same subject, is it practical to arrange an application using the keyboard only, or will our staff need to get used to using a mouse. We will be upgrading from Alpha 4, where things worked well with keeping it simple, ie, just press "enter", to go on the next command of a script, etc. There doesn�t seem to be the equivilent of the "pause" or "waitkey" command in A5, or am I missing something?

Brian Dennis.

[Tom Cone Jr]

RE: Emphasizing selected buttons

Study the properties of the button object in your form. You'll find that you can set and change foreground colors. others have posted code showing how to make objects blink. All of which can be programmed using xbasic.

-- tom

[Ken L Herrold]

RE: Emphasizing selected buttons

Brian:

I'm an old A4 guy who wanted the same thing as you. I.E. an arrow key to the next button and then something other than the dotted border to see that it is selected. Here's some code for the button's properties and it works nicely.

'OnArrive'
this.border.width = 3
this.border.color = "black"
this.font.bold = .t.
this.fill.forecolor="dark gray"
'OnDepart'
this.border.width = 3
this.border.color = "black"
this.font.bold = .f.
this.fill.forecolor="Win3d"

You can see that the text is bold and the border changes slightly - the darn things do look 'selected' when they get focus.

Try it and thank everyone on the board who helped me with this solution and many others.

Ken

[Phil Rolf]

RE: Emphasizing selected buttons

Just tried this and I like what I saw. Going to play around some more.

Thanks

[forskare]

RE: Emphasizing selected buttons

Hey Ken,

I presume you meant it goes on the OnArrive of the button's Actions. Strange thing with my app. I copied and pasted it to my button's OnArrive event, even changed the colors; absolutely no change. Now at that the pits.

kenn

[BDennis]

RE: Emphasizing selected buttons

Thanks all, I think I starting to get the hang of this thing now.

Brian.

[Tom Cone Jr]

RE: Emphasizing selected buttons

Ken, part of the posted script was intended for the OnArrive event and part was intended for the OnDepart event. If you put the whole thing in OnArrive event I can see how Alpha Five might get confused.

--- tom

[Ken L Herrold]

RE: Emphasizing selected buttons

Kenn:

Just try the 'this.font.bold = .t.' on the 'OnArrive' and see if that one thing changes when the button gets focus. Our starting colors probably are different in your's and my buttons.

Trust me Kenn, the xbasic works fine on my setup which is more-or-less the default colored button you would drag to a form in design - with the exceptions of formatted white text.

[the other] KEN

[Ken L Herrold]

RE: Emphasizing selected buttons

Tom,

I remain a not-so-good communicator as you whom I really admire.

Instead of this...
'OnArrive'
this.border.width = 3
this.border.color = "black"
this.font.bold = .t.
this.fill.forecolor="dark gray"
'OnDepart'
this.border.width = 3
this.border.color = "black"
this.font.bold = .f.
this.fill.forecolor="Win3d"

I should have said, "On the 'OnArrive' Event for the menu button use this code below..."

this.border.width = 3
this.border.color = "black"
this.font.bold = .t.
this.fill.forecolor="dark gray"

On the 'On Depart' event for the menu button use this code below.....

this.border.width = 3
this.border.color = "black"
this.font.bold = .f.
this.fill.forecolor="Win3d"

Thanks again, Tom

Ken