World: r3wp

VID and RebGUI widgets don't have a 'loading now ..." state.  Perhaps 
they should

In my app, the data loads instantly once it has arrived.

no, to the whole page.  the window has all the buttons showing ... 
just not the data container itself ...

Well, I would want to see three things:
1) A "loading data..." message.
2) A progress bar.
3) A busy indicator.

All three could be combined into a single widget, or kept separate.

You could ghost the table widget until the data has arrived and is 
ready. Put a box over the top of it with effect [merge luma -20] 
or something like that.

The other thing is .. if you have no data returned from your database 
query ... you then present a useless empty widget.  Or, you present 
an alert that there was no data .. which means you then have to close 
it down .. or you just update your "loading ..." message.

At least the user knows there was data expected there, and what type 
of data it was. ("Knows" visually.)

It's not useless. If your query returned no data, that's no reason 
to pop up alert windows and bug the user. Just indicate inside the 
table widget that there was no data for the particular query.

I'm being influenced by how web apps work.

Eg if you do a search on your gmail ... it doesn't return an empty 
table, but a message saying there were no results.

Same if I have an ajax type of search ... I don't show an empty table 
until it fills .. I show a spinning image and then show the table 
when it is filled.

Fewer widgets on screen means easier comprehension for the user.

And while we're talking about querying and result displays, I often 
am confused as to whether a query I submitted actually returned, 
when it returned empty data. This causes me to query several times 
just to see if the server actually got my query and returned. The 
answer to this (in my opinion) is to return the query and time of 
query in the results as well, in the table title. So you can see 
*something* change on every query result.

Which is part of my search to improve the user experience.

I am now hding the table if someone is repeating the search....until 
the results appear.

Well, that approach doesn't sound bad.

I don't think there are guidelines or best practices :(

We all roll our own GUIs

Hiding the table has the side benefit of telling the user (visually) 
that their query was accepted, but relies on the data transfer to 
be slow. A negative is if the user wanted to keep looking at some 
of the data from the previous query while waiting for the results 
of the next query.

If the table has a selection facility, and the user wanted to do 
something like select row 4 (and then maybe copy it or do something 
else) from several consecutive resultsets, then that might be disrupted 
by hiding and showing the table. Something to keep in mind. (Do you 
keep the same table, or do you remake it for each resultset?)

hi, getting this error.

** Script Error: Face object reused (in more than one pane): none


is there any solution to 'copy or clone' a layout or reuse a layout

for multiple usage ? putting the layout into a object doesn't help 
either. 

same error message. I need a layout-template containing buttons, 
label etc.

and want use this template for to 'pane' it into 20 different independent 

boxes. these boxes will shown 20 different numeric datas, progress 
bars etc. 

have had a look also into stylize/master but can't mix vid with facets 
or 

am I to tired to see a simple solution. builing a very complex facet 
from 

scratch is very time consuming, what is the best design for this? 

tom

why don't you clone yourself the layout as you said ?

how? without the variables sharing the same namespace?

contruct a context with variables each time you clone the layout

layout [a: text b: button]
v1: context [a: b: none]
set bind copy next first v1 v1 reduce [a b]

now you can construct v2, v3, V4 using the same layout

will try immediatly, thx steeve

doesn't work as expected but will take a look again after some sleep. 
 thx for the code snippet steeve

open-test-window: does [context [my-text: my-button: none view/new 
layout [my-text: text "hello" my-button: button "test"]]]
open-test-window
open-test-window
do-events

is there a simple way to tell whether a window was opened with INFORM 
or VIEW?

Try by searching for the window face in system/view/pop-list. If 
found there, then the window has been opened with INFORM or SHOW-POPUP.

thanks

Also check window-face/options

Probably checking system/view/pop-list is all you need to do, but 
you can notice that face/options is different in normal windows vs 
pop-up windows.

If someone has some spare time to spend, I would like to have some 
tests being done for following case - In our PC shop, we mounted 
big LCD TV for some message/advertising purposes. The problem is, 
that the screen is placed vertically. I wrote small news scroller 
script, which eats some CPU cycles, but is still OK and very simple. 
But - when I tried it on that vertically placed TV, it is practically 
unusable :-(  - too jerky. I would like to know, if it is a driver 
issue, or just another View kernel defficiency? Should there be a 
reason why it should be a difference in performance? Video works 
OK for example.


Here's the script to test - http://www.xidys.com/rebol/news-scroller-r2.r
, so if you are willing to mess with your PC settings, go ahead :-) 
(not sure your icon placement will persist ...)

there are drivers that will rotate the screen display.

I know - they all do. But I would like to know, if you will notice 
similar slow-down/jerkiness ...

did you try using the rate attribute?

no .... what do you mean?

An integer! or time! that specifies periodic timer events for a face. 
This is used for animation or repetitive events (such as holding 
the mouse down on certain types of user interface styles). An integer! 
value indicates the number of events per second. A time! provides 
the period between events. The timer event is sent to the face feel 
Engage function with an event type of time.

from http://www.rebol.com/docs/view-system.html

OK, I know - but why do you think it would make any difference? You 
are asking me to change it in order to do some fps tests?

added fps counter to the file. No difference for rotated display 
on my notebook, the same report received from Cyphre. So - it has 
to be some bad driver on the testing PC. Case closed (hopefully), 
thanks for assistance ...

Is there any way to detect where the mouse is after a double click? 
 I want to popup a menu where the mouse is ...

Graham, the engage function takes 3 parameters: face, action and 
event. The mouse offset in the face is event/offset. Then you have 
face/offset and face/parent-face/offset. Adding all, and you get 
the mouse offset on the screen.

ahh.. I wonder if I can hook into that in rebgui

visualisation,
does somebody knows how to create a map like this in rebol?

a qubic map:
http://gdmap.sourceforge.net/img/gdmap-preview.png

some more examples and radial maps of this are here:

http://wiki.ubuntuusers.de/Festplattenbelegung?highlight=verzeichnisserstell

A hint to a source, algo or raw concept etc. would be nice.

especial the calculation how to find and place to the proper position 
within 
the workspace is what I am looking for.

Have you looked at this paper?
http://www.win.tue.nl/~vanwijk/ctm.pdf

It's with explanation, algorithm and everything. Port it to REBOL! 
:-)

great geomol! exactly I was looking for.

I'm have trouble keeping an inform window in front of the parent 
window.

All otehr inform windows remain in front but this one will hide behind 
parent if I clcik on hte parent. 

All other modal characteristics remain - meaning I can not do anything 
in the parent until I close the inform window...

am I right that an INFORM window can't be used with INSERT-EVENT-FUNC 
or is there a way around that?

INSERT-EVENT-FUNC is inserting events in system/view/screen-face/feel 
while INFORM uses system/view/window-feel as window's feel object.