I would like to have 2 absolute layouts that overlay each other. Like having 2 pieces of glass on top of each other where each overlay can have it's own controls and behavior. One absolute layout doesn't work for me because I want each glass (per say) to have it's own behaviors for sizing and such. Xaml is preferred.
What about 2 page on top of eachother where the page on top has transparant background where you can click through?
I have never tried it out but I think it might be possible with this package:
https://github.com/rotorgames/Rg.Plugins.Popup
Good luck!
A way to do this is to enclose both absolute layouts in a parent absolute layout. Zorder becomes important for touch and gestures
Related
I have a UWP app that I am working on, and using absolute position creates problems when using the app on screen sizes different than the one it was designed for.
I'm not sure how exactly i should place elements at distances from each other without using margin and absolute position. How should I be doing this?
Edit: I am using XAML to design the UI.
Well, it depends on what UI you want to build up.
There are various panels and, usually, there is NO need to use absolute position in most cases.
Usually, the Grid panel is used to create flexible layouts, by adding rows and columns: for example, if you want to create a page with some content and a bottom app bar with buttons on it, you usually create a Grid with as many rows as you need for your content controls, plus one for the bottom appbar itself.
Years ago, I also started building UIs by using absolute position for every element, but then times passes and you start having a flexible mind in order to build flexible layouts.
Sorry to not answer any further, but your question is just TOO broad to give any precise answer.
Best regards
How do you properly position elements in XAML without using absolute position?
You should use an appropriate layout panel:
Layout panels are containers that allow you to arrange and group UI elements in your app. The built-in XAML layout panels include RelativePanel, StackPanel, Grid, VariableSizedWrapGrid, and Canvas.
Think I'm missing the obvious here, but I have a Bookstrap 3 navbar that works great in desktop view but as I squeeze the width and it gets to tablet size rather than collapsing into the toggle menu it's jumping the menu onto two lines:
http://www.doorsets.org.uk/
I've tried reducing the text size in the navbar via a media query but that isn't solving it.
What am I missing?
Appreciate it. Thank you.
NJ
One solution might be to change the point at which the navbar collapses, you can do this by creating a customized Bootstrap and setting the #grid-float-breakpoint to a larger number.
This variable unfortunately also influences the dt and dd inside a .dl-horizontal which might be a problem.
If you want to use a media query to reduce the font-size you can use the .navbar-default .navbar-nav > li > a selector. It however needs to become 9px at the smallest viewport size to still stay on a single row which is quite unreadable.
From the Bootstrap documentation:
Overflowing content
Since Bootstrap doesn't know how much space the content in your navbar needs, you might run into issues with content wrapping into a second row. To resolve this, you can:
Reduce the amount or width of navbar items.
Hide certain navbar items at certain screen sizes using responsive utility classes.
Change the point at which your navbar switches between collapsed and horizontal mode. Customize the #grid-float-breakpoint variable or add your own media query.
It goes on to say:
Changing the collapsed mobile navbar breakpoint
The navbar collapses into its vertical mobile view when the viewport is narrower than #grid-float-breakpoint, and expands into its horizontal non-mobile view when the viewport is at least #grid-float-breakpoint in width. Adjust this variable in the Less source to control when the navbar collapses/expands. The default value is 768px (the smallest "small" or "tablet" screen).
I understand the old Struts and Springs method of aligning, sizing and distributing views in Interface Builder. However, I cannot seem to figure out how to evenly distribute views using auto layout with Xcode 5. There was a way to do it using Xcode 4, but that option is gone.
I have 7 buttons arranged in a vertical stack. On a 3.5" layout, it looks great. When I preview the screen in the 4" layout, all of the buttons remain tightly packed and there is a large amount of space below the last button.
I want them to stay the same height, but I want the space between them to be able flex so they can spread out across the screen.
I've been able to get the height of the buttons to flex and fill the space, but that is not my desired behavior. I would like to learn how to use Auto Layout to replace my old Springs behavior, but I can't seem to find any way to do it through Interface Builder.
I'm ok with the top button either being a fixed space from the top edge or a proportional space from the top edge, likewise for the bottom button and the bottom edge. Those are less important to me, I'm good with either.
But I really need to figure out how to evenly distribute the extra space between each of the items in the view.
EDIT Note that in iOS 9 this technique will become unnecessary, because a UIStackView will perform distribution automatically. I'll add another answer explaining how that works.
How to Perform Even Distribution Using Autolayout
The simplest way to do this in Interface Builder alone (rather than constructing constraints in code) is to use "spacer" views:
Position the top and bottom buttons absolutely.
Place spacer views between all the buttons. Use constraints to position them horizontally (centering them horizontally is simplest) and to set their widths.
Make constraints between each button and the spacer view above and below it, with a Constant of 0.
Now select all the spacer views and set their heights to be equal.
The first screen shot shows me setting this up in IB:
I have deliberately not corrected for the "misplaced views" because I want you to see what it looks like while I'm designing the constraints. Here's the result on both a 4 inch and a 3.5 inch screen:
I have left the spacer views black, just to show you how this technique works, but of course in real life you would make them transparent and hence invisible! So the user sees just your buttons, evenly distributed on either height of screen.
The reason for the use of this technique is that although the notion of equality performs the distribution of values you are asking for, constraints can apply equality only between aspects of views; thus we need the extra views (the spacer views) so that we have things we can make equal to other things (here, the heights of the spacer views).
Other Approaches
Obviously, a more flexible approach is to assign the constraints in code. This may sound daunting, but there's a lot of third-party code out there to help you, such as this sort of thing.
For example, if we have a (possibly invisible) superview whose height acts as a boundary to dictate maximum vertical distribution of our four buttons, we can pin their tops to the vertical center of that superview with a constant of 0 but a multiplier of 0.000001, 0.666667, 1.33333, and 2.0 respectively (if we have four buttons); now the buttons will stay vertically distributed even as the superview changes size in response to screen height or whatever. [In Xcode 5.1, it will be possible to set that up in Interface Builder, but in earlier versions of Xcode it is not possible.]
In iOS 9 / Xcode 7 this problem will be trivially solved in IB. Simply select the buttons (or whatever it is you want to distribute vertically) and choose Editor > Embed In > Stack View. Then you simply configure the stack view:
Provide constraints that position and size the stack view itself. For example, pin the four edges of the stack view to the four edges of its superview.
Set the stack view's attributes. In this case we want Vertical axis, Fill alignment, Equal Spacing distribution.
That's all! However, you may be curious about how this works, because it is still possible to do the same thing manually in code. A stack view performs distribution, not by inserting spacer views, but by inserting spacer guides. A guide (a UILayoutGuide) is a lightweight object that behaves like a view for purposes of layout constraints, but is not a view and therefore doesn't have to be made invisible and doesn't carry any of the overhead of a view.
To illustrate, I'll do in code what the stack view is doing. Presume we have four views to distribute vertically. We assign them constraints for everything but their distribution:
They all have absolute height constraints
Their left is pinned to the superview's left, and their right is pinned to the superview's right
The top view's top is pinned to the superview's top, and the bottom view's bottom is pinned to the superview's bottom
Now, presume we have references to the four views as views, an array. Then:
let guides = [UILayoutGuide(), UILayoutGuide(), UILayoutGuide()]
for guide in guides {
self.view.addLayoutGuide(guide)
}
NSLayoutConstraint.activateConstraints([
// guide heights are equal
guides[1].heightAnchor.constraintEqualToAnchor(guides[0].heightAnchor),
guides[2].heightAnchor.constraintEqualToAnchor(guides[0].heightAnchor),
// guide widths are arbitrary, let's say 10
guides[0].widthAnchor.constraintEqualToConstant(10),
guides[1].widthAnchor.constraintEqualToConstant(10),
guides[2].widthAnchor.constraintEqualToConstant(10),
// guide left is arbitrary, let's say superview margin
guides[0].leftAnchor.constraintEqualToAnchor(self.view.leftAnchor),
guides[1].leftAnchor.constraintEqualToAnchor(self.view.leftAnchor),
guides[2].leftAnchor.constraintEqualToAnchor(self.view.leftAnchor),
// bottom of each view is top of following guide
views[0].bottomAnchor.constraintEqualToAnchor(guides[0].topAnchor),
views[1].bottomAnchor.constraintEqualToAnchor(guides[1].topAnchor),
views[2].bottomAnchor.constraintEqualToAnchor(guides[2].topAnchor),
// top of each view is bottom of preceding guide
views[1].topAnchor.constraintEqualToAnchor(guides[0].bottomAnchor),
views[2].topAnchor.constraintEqualToAnchor(guides[1].bottomAnchor),
views[3].topAnchor.constraintEqualToAnchor(guides[2].bottomAnchor)
])
(Obviously I could make that code cuter and shorter using loops, but I have deliberately unrolled the loops for clarity, so that you can see the pattern and the technique.)
I know the title is a little confusing, but the best way to describe what I'm after is by running the Weather metro app on the Consumer Preview; as you scroll horizontally, you'll note that the section headings kind of move around and stay on top of the relevant content, and then fade out as you cross over into a new section. (The main background for the first section also kind of does this)
My question is, how would I go about replicating this behavior in a WinRT app of my own? Are there any existing controls I can leverage or would I have to essentially rewrite it all?
This looks just like a ScrollViewer - you would handle the ViewChanged event and depending on the scroll offset - change the opacity of overlaid static TextBlocks and completely hide the ones that scroll once you cross specific tresholds. I don't think there is anything like that that does it, but I can build it.
I have an NSWindow with 2 NSViews (an NSSplitView and a custom NSView). Accessing the data to populate these views can take some time. During this period, I'd like to gray out the content of these views.
My first approach was to have a black third NSView that covered the other 2 and achieve the graying out effect by changing its alpha value. However I've since learned having a hierarchy with sibling views is undefined.
What is the best approach here?
Cache the NSBitmapImageRep of the 2 views, then replace them with the 3rd view, using the cached image(s) as background
Set the alpha value for each view separately (still not quite sure how to get the black background for the graying effect)
Something I haven't considered
I'd use a child window. Set its content view to a plain black view (hopefully with status and progress information in subviews), and its alpha value to the desired fade-out, and add it as a child window of the window whose content you want to fade out.
I'd teach the views how to draw themselves in a disabled state, but there are other suggestions here:
How can I darken everything displayed in a single NSView?