Overlapping controls missing helptags

General
#1

Hi xojo gurus.

I have a desktop app for Mac and Windows - a simple bookkeeping app.

It runs on a 8 page pagepanel, each page having a colour-coded “header” (green for income, red for expenses etc) such as this:

It has a background parent roundrectangle for colour-coding decor only, with other controls layered on top.

I know I should not be overlapping controls, due to flickering on Windows. However…

My issue is that helptags do not show up on the controls such as the search field or the popupmenu. Otherwise everything works fine, and I’m not getting the flickering. If I drag the child controls off the roundrectangle, the helptags show up fine.

Adding me.parent = nil is no good because the control will then show on all pages of the pagepanel.

My questions:
Is this not what roundrectangles are for, as decor to hold other controls?
How can I get help tags to display on the child controls?
If I shouldn’t overlap controls onto a roundrectangle, how can I achieve a similar effect?

#2

[quote=223251:@Rob Lang]Is this not what roundrectangles are for, as decor to hold other controls?
How can I get help tags to display on the child controls?
If I shouldn’t overlap controls onto a roundrectangle, how can I achieve a similar effect?[/quote]

Flicker is very much an issue when placing controls over a canvas where things are painted. A rectangle is pretty safe. I would not freak over it.

For the help tag, you can use a canvas which you display in MouseEnter, set next to the mouse cursor in MouseMove, and hidden in MouseExit.

#3

Thanks Michel

Yep, I may resort to rolling my own helptag canvas substitute, but why do the inbuilt helptags not work when a control is a child of another?

#4

I just tried a PopupMenu and a TextField over a round rectangle on top of a PagePanel, help tags do show as expected in 2015R3 under Windows 10. There maybe something else.

As for Parent = Nil, you could do Parent = PagePanel instead, if it helps.

#5

I’m still struggling with this. Yes, if I create a clean page panel, a single roundrectangle and a control inside, the help tag shows fine.

On my app, helptag for controls within the round rectangle do not show, UNTIL I resize the window. Even resizing just by a pixel will make the help tags show again.

The round rectangle resizes with the window, and the controls that have the roundrectangle as parent move with the round rectangle when the window is resized. I have no resized or resizing events or anything relying on the window size.

Any ideas as to why are my help tags invisible until I resize the window/app?

#6