On Wed, 11 Aug 1999, Richard Gaskin wrote:
> MetaCard tab buttons have a seemingly minor but rather significant
> usability issue: the label for the selected tab is almost
> indistinguishable from the other, non-selected tabs. Yes, the tab size
> is increased a couple pixels, but this is the only visual change, and in
> a light-colored layout this change is not clear enough, or at least as
> clear as other, more conventional tab drawing methods (see the Mac HIG
> for good tab examples -
> <http://developer.apple.com/techpubs/mac/HIGOS8Guide/thig-29.html#HEADING29
> -0>).
MacOS-style tabs are on the to-do list for 2.3. This doesn't really
solve your problem, though, because MetaCard currently draws Windows
95-style tabs on all platforms and apparently your argument is with
the designers of Windows 95 ;-)
> Ideally, there would be a new property for tab controls which allows us
> to define the unselectedColor, the color of those tabs behind the current
> one.
>
> In absence of this, what do you folks do? I've hard-wired all manner of
> solutions in the past, but at the moment I have a particularly tough case
> in which the tab labels must be dynamic, which prevents me from using any
> hard-wired additional objects, and makes setting the location for other
> objects problematic (cross-platform font widths are hard to predict).
>
> Any tips would be much appreciated -
There is a workaround, but it's not pretty. The trick is to put the
text into a hidden field with the appropriate attributes and get the
formattedWidth of the field. The ugly part is the futzing to account
for the field margins and the space left around the tabs by the
button. But I would guess that if you play around with it, you can
probably get the field's margin properties set to the value that
allows you to use the formattedWidth directly as the width of a given
tab. Then put buttons with darker background colors in the places
where the "underneath" tabs are.
Regards,
Scott
> - Richard Gaskin
> Fourth World
> Multimedia Design and Development for Mac, Windows, UNIX, and the Web
> _____________________________________________________________________
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.FourthWorld.com
> US: 800-288-5825 Int'l: 323-225-3717 Fax: 323-225-0716
>
>
********************************************************
Scott Raney [EMAIL PROTECTED] http://www.metacard.com
MetaCard: You know, there's an easier way to do that...
