Simon,

Thank you for your enquiry.

The problem you describe is a perennial issue for windowed user interfaces (UIs) which have background processes running half a second or longer. This is a “rule of thumb” time period: the amount of time it will take the average user to notice a pause in the responsiveness of the UI.

We know of two UI design options to address this issue:

• Display a “status” dialog for the duration of the background process. The dialog may, optionally, provide quality of service information (eg. a progress gauge or textual counter) and a way to cancel the process. A dialog like this is typically modeless, ie. other windows in the application are accessible at the same time. This means that the user could click on and make changes in another window, even if those changes are not noticeable until after the process completes.

  Your “Please Wait” form is an example of a modeless dialog because it is displayed using the command

    frmWait.Show

• Display a modal dialog for the duration of the background process. When a modal dialog is active, an application will not permit mouse or keyboard input to be sent to any other window within the application. With a Formativ Form, this is done using the command

    frmWait.ShowModal

  The dialog need not be a dedicated status dialog. It could be one used to specify parameters for the process, in which case it may be necessary to disable certain controls for the duration of the process.

For both options, window events must be processed with a frequency and regularity to keep the UI responsive. This is done using the command

  Utilities.DoEvents

Obviously each option has advantages and disadvantages. The one to choose will depend on the specific circumstances of the process and/or UI involved. Below is a code sample demonstrating a simple implementation of the modal solution:

'-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
' The code below assumes that a form MainForm is defined.  The form has the
' following controls:
' - A listview ListView, to display numbers counted by a background process.
' - A button bnConfig, to configure the solution.  This control is disabled when
'   processing.
' - A button bnToggle whose caption is initially "Start", but changes to "Stop"
'   when processing.  When the caption is "Stop", clicking the button cancels
'   the process.  The subroutine bnToggleClick is the event handler for clicking
'   this button.
'
' Note the use of Utilities.DoEvents inside the tight loop of subroutine
' bnToggleClick.  Without this command it would not be possible to stop the
' process manually after it has started.

dim gCount
dim gIndex
dim gIsProcessing

Sub Main(Client, GWEvent)

  gIsProcessing = false
  gCount = 0

  MainForm.ShowModal

End Sub


Sub bnToggleClick(Sender)

  dim oItem

  with MainForm
    if gIsProcessing then
      gIsProcessing = false
      .bnConfig.Enabled = true
      .bnToggle.Caption = "Start"
    else
      gIsProcessing = true
      .bnToggle.Caption = "Stop"
      .bnConfig.Enabled = false

      gIndex = gCount + 1
      gCount = gCount + 1000
      do while (gIndex <= gCount) and gIsProcessing
        set oItem = .ListView.Items.Add
        oItem.Caption = "Item " & CStr(gIndex)
        gIndex = gIndex + 1
        Utilities.DoEvents
      loop

      ' Restore the UI if the user did not cancel the process.
      if gIsProcessing then
        call bnToggleClick(nothing)
      end if
    end if
  end with

End Sub
'-------------------------------------------------------------------------------

I hope this helps.

Regards,
Advansys Support

[This message was edited by Support 1 on August 21, 2006 at 08:40 PM.]

Simon,

Please note the following controls on the Formativ component palette:

• TButton
• TBitBtn
• TRzButton
• TRzBitBtn

All of these controls have the property ModalResult. If you add one of these controls to a form, you can see the list of legal values for ModalResult in the Object Inspector (open the drop-down list).

Forms also have the property ModalResult (not shown in the Object Inspector – it is only meaningful at runtime).

The way to close a modal dialog in code is to set Form.ModalResult to one of the legal values (except mrNone), for example:

  frmWait.ModalResult = mrOK

The value that you choose will become the result of the function frmWait.ShowModal.

An applet’s behavior (whether code or forms) is always the same, whether it is an “open source” or Flexalocked applet.

Regards,
Advansys Support

Thanks for the feedback Simon, great news.

Regards,

Advansys Support