Panel Views

James_Nierodzik · August 22, 2008, 1:08pm

Hi folks I’m trying to figure out how to deal with panel ended handlers and the fact that code does not wait the panel to end before moving on. Here is what I am trying to do. I have a table view that I want to add items to. Upon clicking the “+” button the user should be prompted with a open panel and select the first file/folder. After they have done it the second open panel opens and the user now selects the second file/folder and now the table updates with the paths.

Does anyone have an idea how to do this? I had tried launching the second panel inside the panel ended event of the first panel, but I couldn’t make that work. I also had tried doing a repeat after the first panel launch that doesn’t end until a global is set in the first panel ended and then launch the second, but I couldn’t get that working either.

I’m on a bit of a timetable here so if anyone has an idea or some code samples I would greatly appreciate it.

Thanks!

James_Nierodzik · August 25, 2008, 1:03pm

Just a follow up, I ended up using the suggestion posted by Philip Buckley on the AS Studio list. Here was his suggestion.

Yes, Studio is not going to like you displaying a panel in a panel ended handler! I’ve just had a little play with it but can’t immediately see a way to trick it into doing what you want.

One obvious solution would be to display the open panel in application modal fashion rather than attached to a window (“display open panel” rather than “display open panel attached to window …”), then the script just waits till the user closes the panel. But from a user-interface point of view I always prefer panels attached to windows.

I think if I were implementing it, I would create a custom panel containing two text fields and next to each text field a button labelled “Choose File One” and “Choose File Two” (or whatever), and “OK”, “Cancel” buttons. The user would click on the “+” button and the custom panel would drop down. They would then click on “Choose File One” and the open panel would drop down (on top of the custom panel). When they had dismissed the open panel the file name they had chosen would be put in the first text field. The user would repeat the process with the “Choose File Two” button. Then when both text fileds were populated, they would dismiss the custom panel with the OK button and I would update the table with the file names chosen. I hope you can visualise that! (You CAN display panels attached to panels that are already attached to windows; just give the panel a name, e.g. “AddPanel” and then you would say "display open panel attached to window “AddPanel”. Because you would be displaying the open panel twice, you would need to know whether it was the first time or second time in the panel ended handler. I would probably simply set the title of the open panel before displaying it each time and then check the title in the panel ended handler (set title of open panel to “One”, if title of open panel is “One” then …)).

Such are my immediate thoughts

I think Philip was right on the money with this idea. In the end I was able to keep a unified look by still utilizing panels and keep the interface simple for the end user.