A question for OSX users from a Windows Dude

If you add a container to your project & set a background color does the IDE show that color as the background?

Nope.

No … but IMO it should!!!

Thanks

Just added a container to a project, chose backcolor blue, and HasBackgroundColor True. Color don’t show in the IDE. Dragged an instance on the window and ran : blue square.

So the answer is : like in Windows, color is applied only during run time, even if it does not show at design time.

Sure, it should show in the IDE, but is it not the most important that it does in the running program ?

I agree in that I wouldn’t want to divert Xojo Dev’s to fix this little issue. Just curious whether it was a Windows IDE bug or xPlat.

Xojos tries to make the bugs xPlat too :stuck_out_tongue:

It is XPlat. Tested it in Mac OS X, Windows and Linux. Could be by design, but IMHO one would expect CC to behave like windows in the IDE at design time.

Report :
34819 - ContainerControl BackColor not visible at design time

The same issue presents itself with Backdrop image : not visible in the IDE at design time, but visible when the program is run.

Yes that was confirmed by Gavin & Karen. And it’s interesting that the behavior is different between desktop & Web apps. In the desktop the CC background color is displayed in the Window (but overwritable) while in a WE app the style is ignored & must be overwritten.

This leads me to think perhaps the background color(/style) should not be available in the Inspector for containers at all. For consistency creating a custom label does not give you the ability to set the transparent property, so therefore why should this work or be available for containers?

[quote=119333:@Wayne Golding]Yes that was confirmed by Gavin & Karen. And it’s interesting that the behavior is different between desktop & Web apps. In the desktop the CC background color is displayed in the Window (but overwritable) while in a WE app the style is ignored & must be overwritten.

This leads me to think perhaps the background color(/style) should not be available in the Inspector for containers at all. For consistency creating a custom label does not give you the ability to set the transparent property, so therefore why should this work or be available for containers?[/quote]

Labels are controls. It makes sense that their properties be available only when they are instantiated. ContainerControls are more related to windows in that they allow controls such as labels to be instantiated, even if ultimately they themselves must be instantiated to display. But IMHO their logic is closer to sheet windows than to regular controls.

And even if the same logic as for Labels was to apply, it would make sense that setting the backcolor or backdrop for the instance show in the IDE at design time.

I have the feeling we will have the definite say from Xojo staff today anyway, whether this is a bug or by design.

What started this conversation was a wish to be able to create a Custom Label where I could set the transparency to true (and have it be available in the Library). At the moment I have two options - Create a custom label & in the open event set transparency = true and remember to use this Navigator item for every label (not intuitive) or use a page panel & ignore the transparency (cause they are all white there). So I use a page panel with 1 panel and guess what - I can’t select multiple controls by dragging the mouse I must Control Click every item.

This is not efficient use of my time.

[quote=119336:@Wayne Golding]What started this conversation was a wish to be able to create a Custom Label where I could set the transparency to true (and have it be available in the Library). At the moment I have two options - Create a custom label & in the open event set transparency = true and remember to use this Navigator item for every label (not intuitive) or use a page panel & ignore the transparency (cause they are all white there). So I use a page panel with 1 panel and guess what - I can’t select multiple controls by dragging the mouse I must Control Click every item.

This is not efficient use of my time.[/quote]

I have just placed this feature request in my top cases : 15940 - Default value of label transparent property set to true
Indeed the default for labels under Windows should be transparent.

What about placing the label over a ContainerControl of the same size with its Transparent set to True and locked on all sides ? As far as I can tell, it behaves pretty much like a label transparent as default. Even visually, it is much better than an opaque label turned transparent in Open.