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A picture is worth..well Nothing!

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    A picture is worth..well Nothing!

    It nice to have a customised menu bar and it is also nice to be able to put images on your custom menu bar, Unfortunately, you cannot (Let's say I could not), put just images without text ! Gotta have some text !!!
    I guess a picture, after all, is not worth one word of text!
    Any suggestions ??
    Gabe

    #2
    RE: A picture is worth..well Nothing!

    it's not valid to have a menu entry that is just an image.

    i've never seen a windows program that has an image, but no text on a menu.

    many windows program only have text (and not images ) on menus.

    Comment


      #3
      RE: A picture is worth..well Nothing!

      Why not put your image into a custom tool bar? this is all images (with optional text if you want it, but not required).

      Comment


        #4
        RE: A picture is worth..well Nothing!

        Gabe,

        I created a form view menu item with just an image, but as Selwyn said, I don't know why you would want to do it.

        Create the menu as you normally would. I selected &Help and clicked the green plus sign (Add Item) below, and in the Item Name dialog, hold down the Alt key and on the numberic keypay hit the numbers 2, 5, 5 (without the commas) - this is the ASCII code for a blank form feed. Alpha will accept it and you can now click the OK button to close the Add New Item dialog. You will be back at the Menu Maker dialog and you can check 'Has Bitmap?' and add whatever bitmap you want. Finally, add the action(s) you want performed.

        Dave
        Dave Jampole
        www.customalpha.com

        Women and cats will do whatever they want. The sooner men and dogs realize that, the happier they will be.

        Comment


          #5
          RE: A picture is worth..well Nothing!

          Selwyn:
          "..i've never seen a windows program that has an image, but no text on a menu. "
          I am sure you are correct, but then who said that alpha has to follow and not lead??

          Bill:
          you asked: " Why not put your image into a custom tool bar?"
          Because tool bar does not allow submenus.

          Dave:
          I already tried that, but then try to add another menu item using blanks !! It won't take it. I tell you how I got around it so far, by using coma, dot, tilde..etc. It still shows on the menu but it saves me valuable real estates on the custom menu!

          Now to the real question:
          Ask me, Why do you want to get rid of the text? what is so bad about it ?? Woudn't be a nice complement to the image ?
          I will tell you why: because you could only make the text follow the image which does not leave much room for your images and as I said before, it uses valuable real estates! If you could put the text on top or at the bottom of the image (How about that for now Selwyn?) it would be a much better and welcome alternative !!
          Gabe

          Comment


            #6
            RE: A picture is worth..well Nothing!

            Gabe,

            We and both correct. You can add multiple menu items as I initially suggested, HOWEVER, there needs to be a menu item with visible text in the Item name between two bitmap-only items.

            Dave
            Dave Jampole
            www.customalpha.com

            Women and cats will do whatever they want. The sooner men and dogs realize that, the happier they will be.

            Comment


              #7
              RE: A picture is worth..well Nothing!

              Gabriel, firstly, you can create your own submenu attached to a button by calling the ui_popup_menu() function directly from a toolbar button. It requires writing a bit of code, but the effect is easy enough to mimic.

              And second, I think you are missing the point here. It is generally a bad idea, unless you have a *really* good reason for doing so, to violate Windows standards. It makes your app "feel" strange and unintuitive. I have never seen menus with images anywhere but to the left (anything else would look very strange) and I've never seen a menu entry that is a single image by itself.
              Aaron Brown
              Alpha Software Development Team

              Comment


                #8
                RE: A picture is worth..well Nothing!

                Thanks Aaron:
                "..you can create your own submenu .." I know I can, but I hate re-inventing the wheel and having a program within a program!

                "..It is generally a bad idea, unless you have a *really* good reason.." If you cannot create a custom menu because you do not have enough space to put your images and text next to it, that a pretty good enough reason I think, unless you reduce the size of your images and buy magnifying glasses for your users! Let's not forget, A picture is worth a thousand word of text..

                Even if you reduce the size of your images, you cannot do that with the text which will look odd, unless again you create your own buttons !

                I was not trying to eleminate the text because I hated it, only because it takes very valuable space. I am not sure why having the text on top or at the bottom of the image would be a terrible thing. I do not think Windows will come chasing after you if you do that !! and if you worried about the application looking "strange", give the developer the option to put the text to the left, on top, at the bottom so no one will feel strange!
                Final note: the heck with Windows anyway, since when they pioneered anything !
                Gabe

                Comment


                  #9
                  RE: A picture is worth..well Nothing!

                  Menus aren't a place for pictures, they are a place for icons.
                  What kind of pictures are you putting on menus? The Windows standard is a 12x12 (maybe 16x16) pixel bitmap, no bigger.

                  Like it or not, Windows has a look and feel, which, by changing, will only confuse users.
                  Aaron Brown
                  Alpha Software Development Team

                  Comment


                    #10
                    RE: A picture is worth..well Nothing!

                    Aaron:
                    I am using images 60x60 pixels. The images appear as "Thumbnails" and look and feel great to everyone who saw them! They love it!
                    I also reduced actulaal digital photos to that size and used them as icons. They sure look a lot better than the "guess-what-I-am" icons!
                    Gabe

                    Comment


                      #11
                      RE: A picture is worth..well Nothing!

                      I have a toolbar I keep docked on the left. The toolbar button calls up a global script which uses an ui_get_list() to create my submenus. You can also use this with action scripting to create branches.
                      -Robin

                      Comment


                        #12
                        RE: A picture is worth..well Nothing!

                        Robin:
                        Thanks for the response to this rather old thread, but ui_get_list() will give you a List box with options as opposed to menu type with images/text.

                        This issue of images alone or images with text under the image as opposed to being on either side of it is something that alpha will probably not do as it is not the "norm" for windows applications.

                        Gabe

                        Comment


                          #13
                          RE: A picture is worth..well Nothing!

                          You can have image-only buttons on a form that give you the look and feel of a menu.

                          Comment


                            #14
                            RE: A picture is worth..well Nothing!

                            Ed:
                            Thanks. That was one of the options I explored is to substitute custom menu with multiple buttons. Only one little snag:

                            In custom menu, you have the fly over effect (which will show the sub-menu items) when you go from one item to the next. Not in buttons. Sure you could put your script in OnFlyover, problem is the sub-menu items will not dissapear when you move to the next button. You could make them dissapear, in fact I created a work-around to do that in response to a different thread, but it's a bit cumbersome.

                            Gabe

                            Comment

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