RE: My wishlist

Hey all,

Since the widgets that I needed most had been the least developed in nW
(Tree widget, input widgets), I have meanwhile looked around into other
toolkits which are much richer, such as

http://www.xwt.org/ (Server seems to be down currently)
http://www.bindows.net/ (pretty amazing - how is he doing this?)
And even http://xul.sourceforge.net/ (even though it runs on Mozilla only).

But given the work involved and my sympathies for the project, I would like
to stick with nW eventually (I cannot do anything at the moment anyways).
The only real choice would be Bindows, since it does not require any
installation (as XWT) and is cross-browser (unlike XUL). 

What is so annoying is that every toolkit has a proprietary API and/or
in-line constructors. I can construct GUIs in QtDesigner and translate them
to XUL, but of course that is not possible in nW or Bindows. Wouldn't it
make sense to write a set of bindings on top of nW eventually which emulate
XUL? The nW could be used for "XUL on IE".

But again, maybe I expect the wrong things here, since nW is mainly a
drop-in widget set rather than a full-blown client-side GUI environment.

Best,

Christian

> 
> 
> Hi,
> 
> I'm still a newbie to netWindows, but not to DHtml 
> programming. Well.... I'm a amateur at that too! ;)
> 
> >>It's slow to load, and doesn't move well on the screen.
> As to moving a window....
> I've seen a few examples on the net, display the outline of a 
> window instead of showing the actual window moving around. 
> Alternatively, when a user holds the mouse down (whilst moving a
> window) on the 'Title Bar', one could hide the 'Contents 
> window'. Better yet, make it a property of the window widget 
> instead of the default behaviour(with optional global 
> properties for all windows).
> 
> Speaking about windows....
> Here's my wish list....well, from what I've seen in the 
> window_test.html example.
> 
> We need a taskbar to show all open windows that have been 
> minimized. That way windows, can actually disappear...... 
> title bar and all (And save space to boot). If the developer 
> doesn't want to use the taskBar (Ie, it takes up too much 
> realestate) netWindows can always revert to the current 
> implementation.
> 
> I like the current implementation of the windows.
> E.g.
> Take 2 windows. Click on one. It's pops to the top. Click on 
> the other, it pops to the top. That's all well and good in a 
> number of circumstances. But we should have other behaviours as well.
> 
> Take the case we I want to display 4 or 5 little windows on a 
> screen. One displaying a tree, the others detail screens. 
> Here's how I'd like to see them behave.
> - Windows should know about their own space. If 2 windows are 
> on the same zOrder, they shouldn't be able to overlap each other.
>   In other words, they should be able to move freely in open 
> space, but not over other windows.
> - Maximizing should only maximize to the avaible open space. 
> Minimizing to the titleBar(or taskBar) is fine.
> - Urrmm.... Make them 'stick' to each other ala winamp! ;) 
> (ok... that's more a nice to have !)
> 
> Well, urrm, thats just my R0.02...
> 
> Regards
> KD
> 
> >>> [email protected] 2004/01/29 19:43:18 >>>
> Hi everybody!  Alex asked me awhile back to post a wishlist 
> of stuff for netWindows, and I finally decided to get around 
> to doing it :)
> 
> I'll start first with the split pane.  I do like the split 
> pane, but something that we would like added is the ability 
> to be able to handle click events so that when you click, it 
> closes, click again it opens ( slides in and out ).  So it 
> would be useful in the td that shows that shows the actual 
> 'split' in the page, to split that into three sections so 
> that one section can house an image of some sort that shows 
> you can click it to hide or show the one pane.  I guess as 
> well you'd have to also identify which side of the split pane 
> that you want to show/hide, which you could setup as an 
> attribute on the div of the split pane.
> 
> The second would be the window.  I actually think this should 
> be somewhat higher on the list.  I have found several 
> 'problems' with it, but can't remember them all :)  My first 
> complaint is that it's quite a kludgy window.  It's slow to 
> load, and doesn't move well on the screen, or at least in our 
> app when we move it around it's kind of jerky.  It would also 
> be nice if there was a way of 'caching' the pages that you 
> loaded.  This again could be something that you could pass as 
> an attribute so if you do need to reload the page each and 
> every time you open it, then it can do that, but I think 
> having the option would definitely speed up our stuff.  
> 
> And finally something that would be definitely on a 
> 'wishlist', would be to have a calendar of some sort.  We are 
> currently using a calendar from a third party, but I am not 
> completely happy with it.  I've noticed that you have a 
> date_picker widget that doesn't really have any code in it, 
> so I'm guessing it just needs to be completed :).  Some 
> 'nice' functions to have in there would be a set minimum 
> date, and set maximum date.  This would then limit the 
> choices of dates that the user has. 
> The user would still be allowed to scroll through the list, 
> but they wouldn't be allowed to choose anything outside the 
> minimum or maximum. 
> The minimum/maximum date could also be specified as a number 
> so that you could specify 5 days prior to today to be the 
> minimum date, or 20 days from today to be the maximum date.  
> As well, you should also be able specify whether this is to 
> be a static calendar, one that is always visible, or a 
> calendar that is derived as a popup, click on an image and it 
> pops up.  You should also be able to specify an element ( input box )
> that the selected value gets put into.   And with being able 
> to specify
> a place for the date to go into, you could then also include 
> the validator_widget in it, and you could specify the display format.
> 
> 
> So that is my current wishlist.  I'm sure that I have 
> forgotten things, but for now I figured this was a good 
> starting point!
> 
> 
> Dee Gould
> 
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