Panel Instances

Once the panel classes have been defined in the Panel Class palette, you can create and inspect the instances of these classes.

Adding a Panel to an Application

To add a panel to your application:

  1. Make sure that the Application buffer window is the current window, and that the Panel Class palette is displayed.

    To display the Panel Class palette, click the Panel Class Palette icon in the Main window toolbar.

  2. In the Panel Class palette, select the panel class icon and drag it directly into the Application buffer window.

    An instance of the panel is created in the Application buffer window. This instance is represented as a window. The panel class name is the default name of your new panel.

Managing Panel Instances in the Application Buffer

Once panel instances have been added to your Application buffer window, you can manage them in the same way that you manage windows in a windowing environment. Each panel instance window has a pop-up menu that appears when you click on the top-left corner of the window. The menu has standard window options, such as Restore and Minimize.

Panel Pop-up Menu

The Restore menu item enables you to restore a minimized panel instance to a window with its original size.

The Minimize menu item reduces the panel instance to its title bar.

A panel instance can be inspected by choosing Panel Inspector from this menu.

The Load Contents menu item lets you explicitly load the contents of your panel instance. This is useful when you use the noPanelContents option. (See the description of the noPanelContents option in the section “Configuration Options for the Gadgets Extension” in Customizing the Gadgets Extension of Views Studio.

The Remove Panel option removes the panel instance from the Application buffer window.

Inspecting a Panel Instance

To inspect a panel instance:

  1. Click the box in the top-left corner of the panel instance.

    A pop-up menu appears.

  2. From that menu, choose Panel Inspector.

    You can also double-click the title bar of the panel instance window.

    The Panel Instance inspector appears:

    The General Page of the Panel Instance Inspector

The four notebook pages of the Panel Instance inspector allow you to edit the properties of your panel instances.

The General Page

Name  Use this field to name your panel. This name must be a valid C++ name if you want Views Studio to generate the panel accessors for your application.

Class  This text field displays the name of the generated class of your panel. You cannot edit this field.

User Class  If you use a class that is derived from the generated class displayed in the Class field, type its name in this field. In this case, the file declaring such a class must be included in the generated application class file (see The Header and Source Pages) and its definition module must be linked to the final application.

Title  Use this field to set the title of your panel.

Transient   Use this option menu to set up a relationship between two panels. By selecting an existing panel in this field, you are specifying that the current panel will always be displayed in front of the panel selected in the Transient field.

Destroy Callback  This is the callback invoked when the panel is closed by the window manager. Use the option menu to choose a default destroy callback for your panel.

Bitmap  Enables you to specify a bitmap as the panel background.

Visible  If you do not want the panel to be displayed when launching the application, do not select the Visible toggle button. By default, the panel is visible.

Accelerators  If checked, the panel instance is created with the default container’s accelerators. This means that the panel constructor is called with useacc parameter set to IlvTrue.

Double Buffering   If checked, the inspected panel uses the double-buffering mechanism. This generates the following code:

cont ->setDoubleBuffering(IlvTrue)

The Properties Page

The toggle buttons in the Properties page let you specify the window frame properties. In the generated code, the selected options are combined to set the properties parameter in the call to the panel constructor. Each option corresponds to a predefined property.

The Properties Page of the Panel Instance Inspector

The following table shows the predefined properties that are linked to the toggle buttons in the Properties page of the Panel Instance inspector.

Toggle button

Predefined Property

No Border

IlvBorder

No Resize Border

IIvNoResizeBorder

No Title Bar

IlvNoTitleBar

No System Menu

IlvNoSysMenu

No Min Box

IlvNoMinBox

No Max Bars

IlvNoMaxBox

Iconified

IlvIconified

Maximized

IlvMaximized

MDI child

IlvMDIChild

The Sizes Page

The Sizes page of the Panel Instance inspector has three sections: Bounding Box, Minimum Size, and Maximum Size.

The Sizes Page of the Panel Instance Inspector

x, y, Width, Height  Use these fields to specify the initial position of the panel. The panel size defaults to the size of the buffer. If you want to assign a new size to your panel, turn on the toggle button Generate Size and enter desired values in the Width and Height fields.

Maximum and Minimum Size    Use these fields to specify the Maximum or Minimum field sizes for the panel by entering the desired values in the Width and Height fields

Panel Instance Buttons

Apply  Click to validate your panel options.

Reset  Click to reset the Panel Instance inspector to the last validated values.

Test  Click to test your panel. Unlike the global test for the application, only the inspected panel is shown by this action. The options entered but not yet validated with the Apply button are used to create the test panel. Even if the panel is configured to be not visible, it can be tested.

Close  Click to close the Panel Instance inspector.

Help  Click to access Online Help.

Editing Subpanels

You can use the Application buffer window to create panel instances that are contained in an IlvContainerRectangle object or in an IlvNotebook object. In other words, container rectangles and notebooks can hold subpanels.

To make a panel instance a subpanel of a container rectangle or of a notebook, proceed as explained below:

  1. Click View Rectangles in the top pane of the Palettes panel to display the corresponding palette.

  2. Drag a container rectangle (an IlvGadgetContainerRectangle for example) to the Gadgets buffer window.

  3. Save the buffer as mymainpanel.ilv.

  4. Click the Panel Class Palette icon in the Main window toolbar to display the Panel Class palette.

  5. Click the New Panel Class icon to add the Mymainpanel class to the Panel Class palette.

  6. From the File menu, choose New. In the submenu that appears, choose Gadgets.

    A new Gadgets buffer window opens.

  7. Click Gadgets in the top pane of the Palettes panel.

  8. Drag an IlvNotebook object to the current Gadgets buffer window.

  9. Save the buffer as notebook.ilv.

  10. Click the New Panel Class icon to add the Notebook panel class to the Panel Class palette.

  11. Choose <Application> from the Window menu to activate the Application buffer window.

  12. Drag the Mymainpanel class icon from the Panel Class palette to the Application buffer window.

  13. Drag the Notebook class icon from the Panel Class palette to the container rectangle inside Mymainpanel.

    The container rectangle is highlighted when you drop the subpanel on it.

  14. Choose New from the File menu and then Gadgets in the submenu that appears.

    A new Gadgets buffer window opens.

  15. Drag any objects to the buffer window (text field and message labels, for example) and save it as firstpage.ilv.

  16. Click the New Panel Class icon to add the Firstpage panel class to the Panel Class palette.

  17. Choose <Application> from the Window menu to activate the Application buffer window.

  18. Drag the Firstpage class icon from the Panel Class palette and drop it onto the notebook inside the Mymainpanel panel.

    The following dialog box appears.

    This dialog box lets you add the subpanel instance as a new notebook page or replace an existing page with a new one. A sample of the notebook is displayed in the dialog box in which you can select a page to indicate where the new page should be inserted. If you activate the “Add a new page” toggle button, the new page is inserted after the last notebook page and the selected page is ignored.

Inspecting Subpanel Instances

To inspect a subpanel instance:

  1. Click the box in the top-left corner of Mymainpanel in the Application buffer window.

  2. Choose Panel Inspector from the menu that appears.

    The Panel Instance inspector is displayed.

  3. Click the Hierarchy page.

    In this page, the hierarchy of the panel is displayed as a tree gadget.

    You can see that the Firstpage panel is a subpanel of the Notebook panel, which is itself a subpanel of Mymainpanel.

  4. Double-click the subpanel you want to inspect in the tree gadget, or select the subpanel and click Object Inspector.

    The Panel Instance inspector for the subpanel appears.

  5. To remove a subpanel, select it in the tree gadget in the Hierarchy page and click Remove.