Modal Windows on iOS - livecode

I'm developing a game in Livecode that, when the player has finished, will ask them if they want to play again.
When running on the PC, I can make this happen by using modal stack stackname. The stack appears as I designed it in the editor.
When this runs on the iOS emulator ( and I presume on an iOS device ) , the modal stack occupies the whole screen and is pretty unappealing.
What's the best practise when faced with this problem?

Dave. You could just create a card specifically for that purpose. It will look a lot nicer :)
go card "gameOver"
and the card can contain the choices to start a new game. view scores or whatever other options you have.

Mobile apps are limited to one window at a time, except for the special ask and answer dialogs. You could fake a modal with a group though, and show or hide it as needed.

The easiest and cleanest solution is the create a stack with multiple cards as Splash21 pointed out:
1) Open your stack
2) Create a new card (object menu > new card)
3) Name your card (object menu > card inspector)
go card "gameOver"
If it makes sense for your app to be broken up into multiple stacks you can use the following syntax to load the new stack in the current window:
go stack "newStackName" in window stack "currentStackName"

Related

Developing a TV application

I have been trying to build a TV application, using an SD.
I have got features like image gallery, video player running,
However, I also wanted to add a virtual on-screen keyboard that works with up-down left-right arrow keys. Can somebody help me with how to get started?
When I wanted to do this with my Vestel (Polaroid Branded) smart TV, which uses "Opera for TV devices" as it's HbbTV browser, I found that I didn't need to.
I simply just used HTML text fields and input types where needed, and as soon as I clicked into them, the browser/OS kernel popped up an onscreen keyboard that was built in for me.
However, I did do some research to see if I needed it, and on some devices you do, whilst I never actually implemented it (My app was just for my own use) the "BBC Television Application Layer" (TAL for short) : https://github.com/bbc/tal had pretty good keyboard support.
Another one that might be worth looking at is "Mautilus SDK" : https://github.com/mautilus/sdk
Be aware though, both are horribly convoluted and use quite complex code where it's really not needed.

How to bring an application to the front with picoe/Eto on Mac OSX?

I want to minimize the main window of a C#/Eto app and switch to another program. But when a timer in the Eto app fires it opens a new window, which I want to see. It should be displayed on top of all other windows currently open. The focus may switch to that window, but it's ok if not.
Using BringToFront() of the Form class does not work.
What else could I do?
Due to the way Apple made OS X, you are unable to make a window go to the top with programming. On Windows it is different.
Good luck!

Entering text in Windows 8 in C#/MonoGame app

I'm writing a WinRT game for Windows 8, in C#, using the excellent MonoGame. I've reached the part where the user has achieved a high score and needs to enter their name. This is causing me more pain than I'd anticipated so I thought I'd ask for help.
First of all, is there a simple "enter some text" function that I can call, similar to Guide.BeginShowKeyboardInput in Windows Phone 7, or the ancient InputBox command in VB? I'm using Windows.UI.Popups.MessageDialog for displaying simple dialog messages, but can't find any similar thing for requesting text from the user.
Failing that, is there a way I can easily use a little piece of XAML to present a textbox for the user to use?
If neither of these are possible, I guess I'll have to wire this all up myself... I then would plan to intercept keystrokes and display the required text on screen myself. As I don't have a physical tablet (just the simulator) I'm struggling to start with this. How can I:
Detect whether the device has a physical keyboard, so I know whether or not to display the on screen keyboard?
If there is no physical keyboard, how can I show and hide the on screen keyboard?
Some of these sound like they should be easy to answer, but I've yet to track down answers to any of them.
Many thanks!
Adam.
Hey there is such a way to do this in monogame. There is a new template that allows you to create a XAML + Game game which allows you to use the game class you a used to with the xaml bits as well. These links should get you started. The monogame team rocks.
There are the three game types listed there. You want XAML + Game there is a template for it now if you get the proper version of monogame.
https://github.com/mono/MonoGame/wiki/Windows-8-Project-Types
let me know if you need more help
This is not a cross platform solution but you could use a FlyOut and place the controls for data entry on the window. FlyOut guidelines are here and UI Controls for text input guidelines are here. I have also used MessageDialog in a MonoGame for asking the user simple questions (up to 3 options) or to get a Yes|No response. You can get details of that class here.

Virtual keyboard in Symbian S60 5th edition: Which API to use?

How (i.e. using which API) is the virtual keyboard opened on Symbian S60 5th edition? The documentation seems to lack information about this.
You are right, this should obviously be a published API and it should be highlighted in the documentation. No such luck.
If you are using one of the platform native controls, the virtual keyboard will automatically popup when the user accesses a text-editing control.
If you are making a custom control, you need to deal with its selection by adding your own version of the virtual keyboard: make a new text-editing, window-owning virtual keyboard look-alike custom control with the right buttons. Reuse it accross all your applications. One day, Nokia will realize they have made an obvious mistake and make the API publicly available.
If you are using direct screen access, well, you wouldn't exactly expect the very s60-looking virtual keyboard to popup out of nowwhere. Again, draw a nice image on the screen to let the user know where the virtual keys are and react to pointer events. This is going to be less reusable unless you build a good amount of customization (background, button edges...) into it.
EDIT: Nokia may be relying on Qt to fix this issue. I would expect the control to be part of the current 4.7 version of Qt.
Tinkering with focus on a QLineEdit inside custom coded kinetic scroll area, I've had a simmilar problem (how to open virtual keyboard manually). Then, I found it, this obviously works in Qt 4.6.3 on a C7 Symbian^3 phone:
// lineEdit is an instance of QLineEdit
QApplication::postEvent(lineEdit, new QEvent(QEvent::RequestSoftwareInputPanel));
Before that, I also had to post a QEvent::FocusIn event to that same lineedit, otherwise the QLineEdit did not update the content from virtual keyboard.
Hope this is helpful. I lost hours.
Thank you tihi, very useful tip! There's also the "close virtual keyboard" event that can be triggered:
QApplication::postEvent(lineEdit, new QEvent(QEvent::CloseSoftwareInputPanel));

Customizing/Replacing the Windows CE 5.0 Taskbar?

I'm currently getting my feet wet with Win CE 5.0 to update some code on an existing platform. We're interested in deploying a custom shell/home screen/application launcher as well and I had a couple questions:
1) We're running the standard CE shell and I'm assuming it can be customized because the source code is made available with Platform Builder. I was wondering how "painful" it would be to completely replace it with something like a status bar at the top of the screen (think iPhone). I was thinking task switching could then be handled by shortcut keys exclusively. I have my doubts about this.
2) If it can't be removed, can the taskbar be resized and moved to the top of the screen? We're basically trying to find a way to reserve the first 20 or so pixel rows at the top of the screen for our own status bar and prevent maximized application windows from drawing over top of it.
Thanks very much for the help.
-ksudeadeye
I was happy and angry when I found the solution because it's more easy than I expect.
For 2) reserve space you need to do this:
RECT rc;
SetRect(&rc, 0, 25, GetSystemMetrics(SM_CXSCREEN),GetSystemMetrics(SM_CYSCREEN));
SystemParametersInfoW(SPI_SETWORKAREA, 0, (void*) &rc, SPIF_SENDCHANGE);
With this code you reserve 25 pixels in the top of the screen.
:D
If you have doubts maybe this can help you or this.
Good luck.
To hide the task bar is a simple registry change:
; Hide the windows tasbar by default.
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shell\AutoHide]
""=dword:1
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Shell\OnTop]
""=dword:0
As far as customizing, your own, that is a little more work, and not something I've attempted.
I have some experience with modifying the taskbar in CE 5.0. It is not an easy task, but the results can really add that personal touch to the device. I was tasked with adding a user mode second taskbar with a password dialog and a second type of shell notification to add icons to the user bar.
In the end, it is just standard Windows CE programming - the taskbar, notification tray, start button, etc. are just like any other windows in the CE environment.
You should start exploring here:
C:\WINCE500\PUBLIC\SHELL\OAK\HPC\EXPLORER\TASKBAR\taskbar.cpp
Be careful, clone your code, and be prepared for lots of debug cycles. This is more than 5000 lines of serious spaghetti code.

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