Flyout toolbars

[Iain Johnstone]

Flyout toolbars

I was having a look at a CAD package (TurboCAD from IMSI), and and
played with the flyout (or dropdown) toolbars. These had
standard toolbar buttons with a small yellow triangle in the
bottom right corner. Clicking on the button area performed the
function, but doing this on the yellow triangle produced a
dropdown toolbar - clicking on one of these buttons put this
button on the main toolbar in place of the original.

The BMP that holds the toolbar icons is normal, and the yellow
triangle is a separate BMP that seems to be put on top of the
buttons on the main toolbar.

This is a very sexy technique, and I am intrigued to see how it
is done. At the moment this is just academic, but who
knows.......? I am really just throwing the cat among the
pigeons here, but I have the feeling that I am going to run out
out of toolbar space soon, and this is better than two toolbars!

Iain Johnstone

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[Borje Hagsten]

if you use common control's toolbar, you can create a button with
%tbstyle_dropdown to get additional part with a down arrow on it.
often used in combination with a popup menu. maybe not what you are
looking for here.

can guess they use some sort of ownerdrawn toolbar, or may even own
custom built one. quite easy to do with a label and custom-made buttons.
several samples of custom control buttons, including a few of mine,
here in different forums. recall jules marchildon posted some really
nice samples a while ago to source code forum, that could be useful
for such a thing.
see: http://www.powerbasic.com/support/pb...ad.php?t=22927
and: http://www.powerbasic.com/support/pb...ad.php?t=22933


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[Bob Benson]

I need to use flyouts for a cadd add-on as well!
Are there any examples of a vertical toolbar that
could be used for a starting point?

[Iain Johnstone]

I was wrong (again)! The yellow triangles only indicated that the button
was a flyout button. The flyout takes place when the left mouse button
is held down for a while - perhaps 1 sec. This triggers the flyout. The
button swapping on the toolbar is straightforward, and the flyout
should not present a problem - there is plenty on toolbars in POFFS!

The problem is detecting that the mouse button is down for long enough
(use %WM_LBUTTONDOWN and a timer to WM_LBUTTONUP). The
normal toolbar button activity does not happen until the button is up, whereas
the flyout occurs as soon as the time is up. Trapping the held down button seems
easy enough (Ithink???), but how to determine which toolbar button is active -
would LOWRD(wParam) give this away?

I have just wasted hours trying to trap a yellow triangle - probably senility setting in

Back to the code to try out the above

Iain Johnstone

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[Borje Hagsten]

dug up something i was playing around with last year and polished
it off some. maybe not exactly what you are looking for, but code
shows a way to create a vertical toolbar, plus a popup one, activated
by click on a check button. code posted to source code forum:
http://www.powerbasic.com/support/pb...ad.php?t=23130


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[Bob Benson]

Borje --

Thanks for this example as well as the others that you provide!!
It is always much easier to learn from working code.......

The desired action would be:
If a button on the toolbar is 'clicked' then that button would appear
depressed to indicate a 'default' drawing tool within the cadd program.
If the mouse button is held down, then the flyout would appear.
A 'mouseup' anywhere of the screen would cause the flyout to disappear.
If the cursor is over one of the buttons on the flyout at the time of the
'mouseup', then that button would replace the the 'Popup' button on the
vertical toolbar, which would appear to be depressed, indicating the newly
selected 'default' drawing tool to be used.

Any thoughts on this or perhaps an expanded example would be greatly
appreciated!! TIA

-- Bob

[Bob Benson]

OK, I give up!
Where can TBSTYLE_LIST be documented?

[Borje Hagsten]

TBSTYLE_LIST came with COMMCTRL.DLL v4.70 (MSIE 3.0). All it does
is place images beside text, so buttons becomes more rectangular.

Problem with toolbar is all different versions. If a user has Win95,
it is possible v4.00 of above DLL still is there - and suddenly lots
of new code is broken. This is why I prefer other ways, like using
plain STATIC as parent and placing my own buttons on it.

Other thing - buttons on toolbar are not buttons! As someone noted
before, they are probably drawn with DrawFrame API. This means, no
handle for individual buttons, which means more difficult to do
special tricks.

Can use a timer, though. What if you use SetTimer API in clicked
button's WM_COMMAND and then trap result plus kill timer in WM_TIMER?
Probably need to store clicked "button's" RECT via %TB_GETITEMRECT
message and compare cursor position by using GetCursorPos and map
the result to window when timer ticks.

However, sometimes better to use own methods. Personally, I hate
popups that forces me to keep mouse button down until I have made the
selection. Always fumbles and looses the popup, or slip and select
wrong item so I have to repeat the whole thing. I prefer popups that
remain until next click..

BTW, to change bitmap on a button, you can use something like:

  SendMessage ghTBar, %TB_CHANGEBITMAP, %ID_TOOL, MAKLNG(%STD_FILEOPEN, 0)

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[Iain Johnstone]

I have had a play with this, and posted some source code on the
Source code forum. This still needs refining, but it is getting
there.

Iain Johnstone

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[Iain Johnstone]

Have added a few extra bits - see second post in Source code forum

Iain Johnstone

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[Jules Marchildon]

Ian;

You changed the name of the resource file to FLYOUT.PBR, any changes
or can I use skeleton.pbr?

Thanks!
Jules

[Iain Johnstone]

Jules - sorry about that - did it without thinking. Skeleton PBR
is ok. I have tried the DLL route with zero succes - too many
variables flying about! Also one little querk - the first time
an ico in the main toolbar sis selected, it does the default
task irrespective of how long the button is held down - obviously
TimeElapsed is not being set at this point

Iain

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[Jules Marchildon]

Hi Ian,

I have tried the DLL route with zero succes - too many variables flying about!

I think that's where SuperClassing and private instance data saved on your private
Heap comes in handy. I'm still learning, and I follow all of Borje's(and others) work, since
he(they) has been so great to share his programming skills with us.

Regards,
Jules