Pause UI in WinRT 8.1 - windows-runtime

I can't for the life of me get the following functionality to work:
User taps item
Item's image becomes visible via changing visibility property of image
After a short period of time image becomes invisible again (with no user input) via changing the
visibility property
Or, more simply:
Make visible UI change
Pause so user can see UI change
Reverse step 1's UI change
Step 2 happens before steps 1 and 3 regardless of where the code is because the UI is not updating until the logic finishes (I assume).
I am setting the visibility of the image via data binding with INotifyPropertyChanged. All works as expected except when I'm trying to introduce the pause.
I'm trying to pause with this simple method:
private void Pause()
{
new System.Threading.ManualResetEvent(false).WaitOne(1000);
}
It does pause, but the UI changes wait until after that pause even though a change to the bound data happen befores the pause is called, and the other change after.
I have tried using the dispatcher, but it doesn't change anything, and I don't understand it enough:
await dispatcher.RunAsync(CoreDispatcherPriority.High, () =>
{
clickedCard.IsFaceDown = false; // makes the image visible via data binding
}
);
Pause();
I think I need to do something with threading, but I am going in circles.
Any ideas?

You should never do something like this inside the UI thread of your app:
new System.Threading.ManualResetEvent(false).WaitOne(1000);
There are various reasons for not doing it, but in your particular case the problem is that XAML only re-draws once your event-handler completes. So basically this happens:
The item is invisible
Your event handler is called
You set it to visible (but the UI doesn't refresh yet)
You freeze the thread for a second
You set it to invisible again
The event-handler completes
Now the UI updates based on the current value (which is invisible)
I suggest you look at building a Storyboard to do this - Blend can help. See here.

Related

Flash CS6 Button Not Working Despite No Compiler/Output Errors

I'm using Flash CS6, AS3 to create buttons for my project. Below is my code:
Intro_btn.addEventListener(MouseEvent.MOUSE_DOWN, Intro_func);
function Intro_func(event:MouseEvent):void {
gotoAndStop("Intro");
}
No errors appear when I run it on the output and compiler panel, and the same happens when I run it through the debugger. Also, I have used the exact same code for five other buttons, and they have no problems working. Please can someone tell me what is wrong with my code???
I would need to know more info of your code and the type of buttons you're using, however I would try this steps:
1.- add a Button component from the component inspector, set its instance name, and add that same function to the Click event:
newButton.addEventListener(MouseEvent.CLICK, Intro_func);
function Intro_func(event:MouseEvent):void {
trace("function executed");
gotoAndStop("Intro");
}
2.- run your app and test if the action is executed with this new button. If this test pass, then your problem is your button.
check this on your button:
check the base class of the button (be sure its a MovieClip or a Button class)
check if your button is enabled/disabled.
check if your button or its children has mouseEnabled and mouseChildren set as
true.
check there is no other object on top of the button either in your artboard or added by code at runtime.
I finally would suggest you to set useHandCursor = true; this will replace your mouse pointer arrow to a hand when you move over your button (this is just to test that your button is actually interacting with mouse).
hope this helps.
sorry for the delay, But I've found your solution, It's easier than you thought: your frame is delayed.
your Intro_btn script is on frame 10, however in frame one you're telling it to go to frame 9 (the "Erhu" frame label) so the actions to setup the event listener are never being called.
Also keep in mind the following:
objects exists only in their frames life time, if you have an object from frame 5 to 10, it will only exist in there, so moving to a previous or later frame (e.g. frames 4 and 11) will internally delete the object in memory along with their asociated actions, in english:
you placed the button in frame 10 and added its MOUSE_DOWN listener however, if you go back to frame 0, since the button doesn't exists in this frame it will be deleted from memory along with its listeners, so if you go from frame 0 to any other frame different than 10, your button will never have its listeners associated.
So my suggestion:
1.- add your function into frame 0:
function Intro_func(event:MouseEvent):void {
trace("function executed");
gotoAndStop("Intro");
}
2.- create a new layer. In this layer add a keyframe at the same position where your Intro_btn is(frame 10), and fill the rest of the timeline of this layer with empty frames (no keyframes), finally in the same layer add in frame 10 your listener Intro_btn.addEventListener. this way, the action is available for every subsecuent frame from frame 10.
hope this solves your problem.

How to handle input for an on-screen gui (for pause button) in Android?

I'm working on game made with libgdx that needs some GUI above my game screen. Something like FrameLayout in Android.
I have GameScreen where everything is happening.
What I want now is to add a "pause" button, highscore information etc.
I've tried to combine a Stage object with regular sprite drawing.
But I had some problems with handling inputs: how to manage if user clicked pause button in stage, or clicked game area (where I should add some bullets)...
You should be able to use a Stage to manage your UI. To get input working correctly, you'll need to add an InputMultiplexer
so that the Stage and then your current input scheme will both get the inputs.
To set it up, you'll do something like this:
InputMultiplexer multiplexer = new InputMultiplexer();
multiplexer.addProcessor(stage);
multiplexer.addProcessor(gameScreenInputProcessor);
Gdx.input.setInputProcessor(multiplexer);
(Code sample based on code from https://code.google.com/p/libgdx/wiki/InputEvent)
Note that the order is important (I'm guessing you'll want the stage to get events first to see if the UI is being touched or not). Also, the boolean return value from input event handlers are more important with a multiplexer, as "handled" events will not be propagated by the mutliplexer. UI events inside the Stage have their own "handled" flag (mostly it does the right thing but there are some subtle differences).
One alternative to the InputMultiplexer would be to create a "GameScreenActor" (a new subclass of Actor) that contains your current game screen that you plug into the global Stage. You'd have to move your input processing to the scene2d approach, though. This probably isn't the right choice for you, but it is a viable one.

Is there a way in ActionScript to force an IMMEDIATE update of the stage, _not_ after an event?

I know the method MouseEvent.updateAfterEvent() or KeyboardEvent.updateAfterEvent() which will force a re-render of the stage just after the event is handled rather than waiting for the next frame.
However, I need a method to force an immediate render at the very moment I call it. Is there such a method?
Actually my problem comes from the demential design of ActionScript's printing API (PrintJob). Inconsistent with the whole ActionScript architecture, when you call PrintJob.start(), everything is completely frozen while the printing dialog is shown until the user clicks the print or cancel button. Execution of any code after the PrintJob.start() call is resumed after that.
Among a lot of other much worse issues coming from this gigantic design flaw, there is mine:
public function someMouseOrKeyboardEventHandler() {
somethingThatUpdatesTheDisplayList();
var somePrintJob=new PrintJob();
somePrintJob.start();
//...
somePrintJob.send();
}
When this handler of mine is called, the changes made to the display list will not be visible until after the printing dialog has been closed, so I can't, for example, show something on the screen just before I open the print dialog.
updateAfterEvent() won't help a bit (already tried it). It won't change a thing, since it only forces rendering after the event handler code is executed.
Is there any updateRightNow()-like thing?
Nope, you unfortunately can't force an update in the middle of your code.
You can, however, wait until the next frame to call start() on the PrintJob; this will give Flash time to update the stage before everything freezes.

Adobe flex popup single instance

I need to create a flex popup which would be a single instance but we can make it visible and invisible whenver we want to display it. I am not sure we can implement this kind of functionality using createPopup or addpopup method. Instance must be one and need to update it every time some event happen and make it visible or invisible.
thanks
createPopUp requires a class name. All the internals of creating the popup are in that method. You won't be able to use createPopUp with an existing instance of a window. However, when you call createPopUp, the results you get will be the instance of the new popup you just created.
However, addPopUp does accept an instance of an already creating component. You'll want to proceed in one of a few ways:
1) if the popup instance exists; use addPopUp; otherwise use createPopUp:
if(myPopUp){
PopUpManager.addPopUp(myPopUp, etc...)
} else {
myPopUp = PopUpManager.createPopUp(this, myPopUpClassName, etc..);
}
2) Create the popup yourself and always use addPopUp
if(!myPopUp){
myPopUp = new myPopUpClass();
}
PopUpManager.addPopUp(myPopUp, etc...);
Whenever you want to hide the pop up, do so using the removePopUp() method. This method will not destroy the pop up instance, just remove it from view.
PopUpManager.removePopUp(myPopUp);
You're going to have to figure out how to store the reference to your popup outside of the PopUpManager.
And I warn you that all the code I wrote here is psuedo code.

How do I force or lock focus in actionscript 3?

I want to create a dialog or alert box, where a DisplayObject would take and force the focus, until an okay button or something releases the lock. thanks.
The easy way to do this is to make your "dialog" as big as the stage, with a whacking great transparent area around the dialog itself.
The transparent area can listen for any mouse clicks, and just swallow them (which will prevent them being picked up by stuff further back in the display list).
To show the alert, just stick it on top of everything else, When the user closes it, take it away again.
If you are using flex and actionscript, simply use a SkinnablePopUpContainer
var alt:CustomPopUp = new CustomPopUp();
alt.open(this,true) //the second variable is for modal, which will disable view
this.enabled = false; //this will grey out the parent view and provide visual focus to your popup.
To do this, you will need to disable access to all objects under your 'alert' DisplayObject. There are multiple ways of doing this, here 2 I can think off:
Loop through the display list and disable any display objects under your alert depth wise.
Cheat it with a blocker. When you display your alert, display another clip (could have alpha set to 0 ) that blocks the user from hovering/clicking objects. The blocker might need a bit of setup( buttonMode = true, useHandCursor = false, etc. )
This 'modal' behavior has been around for some so there might be no need to reinvent the wheel, depending of your current setup.
If you're using the Flex framework, you've got the functionality in, for Flash you can use the Alert Manager from the Yahoo! Flash Astra Components:
Goodluck,