What is the Placard control for?

I don’t have a need to use it but I am just interested what the placard control is for and has/does anyone use it and what for?

According to the LR:
“A placard is a control that you can use as an information display or as background fill for a control area. Placards have three states: normal, pressed, and disabled.”

The Apple Dosc says:

Albin, thanks. I had read the LR bit but still didn’t see the need for them.

Just wondered if anyone had any examples of where they have used them?

If I remember correctly, several years ago there was discussion about removing the control. I think after all the discussion it turned out several developers were using it so it remains. I’ve never had any use for it.

So… in at least 2014, Apple reccomends not using Placards, and there was a discussion (Apple or Xojo?) about removing it…

To me this looks like a “cheap” container, and obviously it seems to be delegated (see what I did there :slight_smile: ) to the back of the closet… since the documentation still refers to “the parent windows Composite property”… when WAS removed long ago

and I can’t find any Apple docs that currently describe anything similar, but there must be if Xojo is using all Native controls (except for listbox)???

just curious

It appears to be a very old control. Found a link to a PDF entitled “MacOS8 Human Interface Guidelines” here:

http://www.inf.fu-berlin.de/lehre/WS97/SWT/docs/thig_book.pdf

On page 44:

A placard is a control that you can use as an information display or as background fill for a control area. Placards have three states: normal, pressed, and disabled.

Perhaps the most familiar use of the placard control is as a small information panel, often placed at the bottom of a window to the left of the horizontal scroll bar. Figure 2-35 shows an example of this use of a placard.

Figure 2-35 A placard used to report information to the user (see the linked PDF file for image)

You can extend the functionality of a placard. Providing a pop-up menu, for instance, would give the user a convenient way to choose the magnification level of the window.

pretty much what the Xojo docs say… so in a nutshell… pretty much useless…

[quote=408679:@Anthony Dellos]It appears to be a very old control. Found a link to a PDF entitled “MacOS8 Human Interface Guidelines” here:

http://www.inf.fu-berlin.de/lehre/WS97/SWT/docs/thig_book.pdf

On page 44:

[/quote]

Wow, a documentation from 1997.

What apple says:

Avoid using placards. Placards are seldom used in modern apps and their use is discouraged. Toolbars and menus are the preferred ways to let people manipulate the view of content.

But, it says something similar about bevel buttons:

Avoid using bevel buttons. This button style is seldom used in modern apps and its use is discouraged. Use push buttons, checkboxes, pop-up buttons, radio buttons, or segmented controls instead.

Looks like we have deprecated controls, but no new controls added. Even in the 1997 guide is a date control but, not in xojo.

For the recent edition of the Human Interface Guidelines, it is here:

https://developer.apple.com/design/human-interface-guidelines/macos/overview/visual-index/

The ironic thing about that statement… is the default state of NSButton is a Bevel button… ALL the controls you just named are derived that that ONE base class

BevelButton ?
I used some, but trashed them and replaced by a Canvas.

Because I had a rect aound my circle buttons.
Because the displayed image was not nice. Much more nice was the same button using Canvas.

I do not returned to BevelButtons since that bad experience.

I had a manager, long time ago, who always says: “If you do not use it for the last three months, you do not need to keep it”.
Another person says (here ? old forum ?) “If you do not know how to use it, it is because it is useless to you, forget about it” (or something like this).

Nota: I had a use of the LineTool, but stopped to use it when I realized that my lines was not always respecting how I place them and replaced them by a Graphics line (g.DrawLine)…

i start using canvas for button recently. the question i have is if you have 10 canvas button, how do u tell which one is which without clicking on each canvas button and look at the inspector on the side

For DB Buttons, I use as Canvas names cDB_Nav_First, cDB_Nav_Last, cDB_Nav_Next, cDB_Nav_Previous; so I know and they are grouped in the navigation pane. The Canvas display meaningful arrows.

I nearly do the same for TextFields, TextAreas, etc. (TF and TA if there is only one on the window, other meaningful names if more than one).

You can also alt-click on the Control name in the Navigation pane and get its name in the Code Editor…
(or alt-shift-click I forgot / cannot fire Xojo: not enough memory right now).