Styling of Tab Panel

Getting Started
1

Hi,

I’m new to Xojo and just learning it, mostly through the orientation book now which is very good.

I have some questions though, and first on my list is that I am curious if it is possible to style the Tab Panel for desktop applications.

It’s perfect for my application for functionality and for my intended use, but…

  1. I would especially like the tabs to be left justified above the window content, and not centered.
  2. I would love to be able to style them at least somewhat with a minimum width and (ideally) a background image.

Is this possible? it doesn’t seem so from looking at the docs for Tab Panel. So…

If not, then apparently there are numerous “plugins” that one can get to do all kinds of things that are interesting … how would I develop my own “Tab Panel” eventually, and when I do, is it relatively painless to move all the code and layout from my existing cheezy (sorry… but it does look a bit cheezy to me) Tab Panel to my newfangled styled one? (It seems you can sort of drag and drop controls from one window to another and all the associated event handlers go with - that’s cool)

Or is there a better way to completely switch out the contents of a window based on user selection with Xojo?

2

You can create you own “tabpanel” using a canvas… and have it positioned over the top of a PAGEPANEL control.
When you click your mouse on the canvas control… it redraws to show what the new tabs look like, and sets the index of the pagepanel accordingly.

Yes that is a simplistic explanation… but that is how a lot of the 3rd party controls do it…

3

Thanks … I think that gives me enough information to figure out how to handle it.

-Mars