I miss my 3d formcontrols

[Dan Jinks]

I have successfully converted my main form and am working to make it pretty in the forms designer. Main comments: 1. I miss my pretty Superbase 3D controls! Hopefully more current and professional widgets are coming soon. Mostly this affects the buttons, but I had made good use of 3D text boxes and rectangles also. 2. Textboxes and buttons seem to have a border, but I have no control over it in the properties dialogs. Am I right? Rectangles have a border in the properties, but there is no control over thickness. 3. I can live with the textboxes, but buttons look particularly weak, with a thin light grey background outside the button border to complete the button’s rectangle. I have no control in the properties of either border color or outside margin color. Unless I select CLR_BTNFACE for rectangle/page background, the effect looks bad. I guess I’m too accustomed to using colored background on my forms. 4. Forms designer crashed once or twice, but I cannot reproduce the failure yet.

[Michael]

On 08/07/2011 04:09, djinks wrote:
> I have successfully converted my main form and am working to make it
> pretty in the forms designer. Main comments:
>
> 1. I miss my pretty Superbase 3D controls! Hopefully more current
> and professional widgets are coming soon. Mostly this affects the
> buttons, but I had made good use of 3D text boxes and rectangles
> also.

Actually, all of the controls that we currently have are native
controls. Superbase did not use native controls, it drew them all
itself, which is why it couldn't work with native controls and why
things always lagged behind the current look/theme.

> 2. Textboxes and buttons seem to have a border, but I have no
> control over it in the properties dialogs. Am I right? Rectangles
> have a border in the properties, but there is no control over
> thickness.

That is correct. Textboxes and buttons, etc. all inherit whatever the
current theme says they should look like. Remember, they are native
controls.

> 3. I can live with the textboxes, but buttons look particularly
> weak, with a thin light grey background outside the button border to
> complete the button's rectangle. I have no control in the properties
> of either border color or outside margin color. Unless I select
> CLR_BTNFACE for rectangle/page background, the effect looks bad. I
> guess I'm too accustomed to using colored background on my forms.

Actually, the buttons should look like other buttons on your system. I
have used colored buttons and colored backgrounds, and the buttons look
OK. Worst case, you could use bitmap buttons instead and you can provide
the bitmaps yourself to achieve any look you want, including the height
and color of the bevel.

> 4. Forms designer crashed once or twice, but I cannot reproduce the
> failure yet.

Let me know if you can reproduce it. I have tried to find all places
where things can go wrong, but sometimes enhancements break things
(though seldom). Did it just exit, or did it actually crash?

Ciao, Neil

[Dan Jinks]

Here is my Superbase form
http://www.jinksinc.com/JTMConneX34/Connex34Page1.shtm
and the SIMPOL one.
http://www.jinksinc.com/JTMConnex50/Connex50.jpg

I looked at your SBAir checkin.sxf form and decided the raised rectangle
in my form was causing the problem. I removed the rectangle (was only
there for the raised edge effect) and things started looking better. I
don't think I will need bitmap buttons now.

I'm using system colors for everything for now. Is there an advantage
to using them, other than they change when the theme changes?

-Dan

On 7/8/2011 6:02 AM, Neil Robinson wrote:
> On 08/07/2011 04:09, djinks wrote:
>> I have successfully converted my main form and am working to make it
>> pretty in the forms designer. Main comments:
>>
>> 1. I miss my pretty Superbase 3D controls! Hopefully more current
>> and professional widgets are coming soon. Mostly this affects the
>> buttons, but I had made good use of 3D text boxes and rectangles
>> also.
>
> Actually, all of the controls that we currently have are native
> controls. Superbase did not use native controls, it drew them all
> itself, which is why it couldn't work with native controls and why
> things always lagged behind the current look/theme.
>
>> 2. Textboxes and buttons seem to have a border, but I have no
>> control over it in the properties dialogs. Am I right? Rectangles
>> have a border in the properties, but there is no control over
>> thickness.
>
> That is correct. Textboxes and buttons, etc. all inherit whatever the
> current theme says they should look like. Remember, they are native
> controls.
>
>> 3. I can live with the textboxes, but buttons look particularly
>> weak, with a thin light grey background outside the button border to
>> complete the button's rectangle. I have no control in the properties
>> of either border color or outside margin color. Unless I select
>> CLR_BTNFACE for rectangle/page background, the effect looks bad. I
>> guess I'm too accustomed to using colored background on my forms.
>
> Actually, the buttons should look like other buttons on your system. I
> have used colored buttons and colored backgrounds, and the buttons look
> OK. Worst case, you could use bitmap buttons instead and you can provide
> the bitmaps yourself to achieve any look you want, including the height
> and color of the bevel.
>
>> 4. Forms designer crashed once or twice, but I cannot reproduce the
>> failure yet.
>
> Let me know if you can reproduce it. I have tried to find all places
> where things can go wrong, but sometimes enhancements break things
> (though seldom). Did it just exit, or did it actually crash?
>
> Ciao, Neil
>
>

[Michael]

On 08/07/2011 13:24, djinks wrote:
> Here is my Superbase form
> http://www.jinksinc.com/JTMConneX34/Connex34Page1.shtm and the SIMPOL
> one. http://www.jinksinc.com/JTMConnex50/Connex50.jpg
>
> I looked at your SBAir checkin.sxf form and decided the raised
> rectangle in my form was causing the problem. I removed the
> rectangle (was only there for the raised edge effect) and things
> started looking better. I don't think I will need bitmap buttons
> now.
>
> I'm using system colors for everything for now. Is there an
> advantage to using them, other than they change when the theme
> changes?

That is the main advantage, that they adjust themselves to the user's theme.

Ciao, Neil

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