Category Image Squeak enhancement - borders with skips


 


While tinkering with the Photos Publisher application I'd written with Squeak, and BLOG'd about here, I realized I didn't like certain aspects of the GUI.


For example, the frames for clip images and thumbs would look cooler if the title of the frame were part of the border. I'd also like to change how the New Folder button seems to float with "intent" about the Output Folder control and embed it into the border around that control too.

It was easy to enhance Squeak to support this feature, and a little more work to generalize it. The tricky part was teaching the border drawing code to leave gaps, or skip over, where the new labels and buttons would be located. You could just take the easy route and overlay the new label or button on top of the border. But that ends up looking messy if you intend any transparency in the label or button. In the Photos Publisher window, for example, I use a gentle gradient for background color running from one corner of the window to the other. So having transparent blended controls look better.

The package was published to my Squeak Enhancement page. There's some notes about use there. Reviewing the code is the easiest way to understand how to use this new "skipping border". I created a class for testing my ideas out while developing. It has an example of how to use the new border design and it created this output.

Posted: Sunday - April 10, 2005 at 09:52 AM           |

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