On May 4, 2010, at 8:30 AM, Steve Jones wrote:

> Fairly new to RR here, but have used HyperCard and then SuperCard at the 
> amateur level for a while.
> 
> I see in RR that you put items in GROUPS to have them appear on every card in 
> a stack as opposed to SC where you put them in the BACKGROUND.  I have a 
> GROUP of items on a single card in a stack.  When the CREATE CARD command is 
> issued in a handler, a new card is created but the GROUP is not on it.  What 
> might I be doing wrong?

Others have answered your basic question, but I can add that the concept of 
groups in Rev is simultaneously one of the more useful things in Rev, while at 
the same time one of the hardest cognitive shifts for people moving to Rev from 
HyperCard or SuperCard. I think that's because in Rev, groups are far more than 
just a replacement for backgrounds. When I introduce groups in my Rev class I 
tell my students that there are two main reasons for using groups:

1. To associate several controls into a single group for ease of formatting or 
rearranging your layout; or because the controls need to interact in some way. 
For example, if you want to have a set of radio-style buttons, which let the 
user make “mutually-exclusive” choices, you need to group them. When you do 
that, Rev will automatically un-highlight previously highlighted buttons in the 
group.

2. To place the same controls on multiple cards. Often, for example, you may 
want to have buttons on every card of your stack that allow you to go to the 
next and previous cards in the stack. In cases like these, it is best to create 
the Previous/Next buttons on a card, group them, then place the group on all of 
the cards in the stack. The main advantage of this approach are obvious: if you 
have buttons that do the same thing on each card, and you use a group, the 
buttons stay in the same location on each card, have the same appearance on 
each card, and if you have to make a change to a button, you only have to do it 
once, instead of once for every card in the stack.

Groups can appear only on one card, or can be placed on as many cards as you 
want, by using "Place Group" from the Object menu. Once you manually place a 
group on more than one card, Revolution automatically considers it a 
background, and its backgroundBehavior property is automatically set to true. 
If you are not aware of this quirk, it can cause unexpected consequences.

If you want to read more, see http://revolution.byu.edu/groups/Groups.php

When I first switched to Rev from HC, I was completely confused by groups. Once 
I got my head around the concept and figured out how they worked, I was sold 
and would never go back to just card layer vs. background layer.

Anyway, welcome to the revolution. Hope this is useful.

Devin

Devin Asay
Humanities Technology and Research Support Center
Brigham Young University

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