Progress cursor with a cross instead of the arrow - html

Some parts of my web-application are using the standard crosshair cursor. When a request to the server is pending, I would like to notify the user by displaying the progress cursor.
However, the use of crosshair is really important. Is there a way to display a cursor which would look like the progress one, but with a cross (like in crosshair) instead of the arrow?
I know I can use my own cursors in order to do that, but that would be disastrous for the user experience. In summary:
Can I use together two cursors?
If not, can I use a system cursor as an image, in order to create my own-compound cursor?
If not, what solution would you propose?

From the UX point of view - I would advice against using the "wait" cursor; If your app is asynchronous and you're using ajax for your requests - you should display a "loader" swirl in the relevant component (table/list/etc.) and leave the cursor as it should be.
Cursor is like an extension of user's hand :-)
If a part of the app is doing something in the background - I would let the user interact with the rest of the app normally.

Related

How to make use of Markups Core 'Callout' EditMode

I am attempting to replicate the BIM 360's Design Review Editor's callout tool (the most useful tool of them all) within my Forge app, but I can't seem to get the callouts edit mode from the Markups Core extension to work properly. When I change the editMode to 'callout', it seems to only create the text box at the end of the callout. So far, I've only been able to get this to work via a clumsy chain of eventListeners latched to the svg element that:
1. listen for the 'mouseup' event while drawing cloud,
2. switch editMode to arrow,
3. fire off a 'mousedown' event to begin new arrow,
4. listen for 'mouseup' event while drawing arrow,
5. switch editMode to callout,
6. switch editMode back to cloud when test has been entered.
Not only is it very clumsy, but it also ends up looking absolutely horrible!
Does anyone know how to activate this tool properly, or if it's meant to work exactly as it does?
It really is a shame that we have to reinvent the wheel on so many of these tool that are implemented in BIM360... and used to be part of the Markups extension, but are now gone.
I'm really not a graphical interface developer, and if I have to become one, it will be years before I finish this app and my company can make use of it.
You're using the callout tool from MarkupsCore properly. Unfortunately, the tool only generates the text box as you've observed. It does not generate the "cloud" rectangle and connecting line as in BIM360.

Game show buzzer screens

I'm doing a training class right now and one of the games I plan on doing is a Jeopardy style of Q & A. The problem I'm trying to figure out is the buzzer. My idea is to use the projector as the question board I control. The trainees would go to an HTML page with nothing more than a single button. They would turn their monitors around to face me up front. As soon as I read the question they would click the button and it would change their screens the color red.
The button and background color change is easy enough, I got that. There are two problems I'm facing: 1) I need it so that they can't click the button until I'm done reading the question - this one isn't as important, I can just make up a rule. 2) Only the fastest person will have a red screen. To show me who clicked first. The others' buttons will be disabled.
I just have no idea how to even Google these two things. Like: "Disable button for other users"...? Or maybe, "only one click"...?
Any direction to search is appreciated. Eventually, I'd like to add other aspects to like the presenter could click an "incorrect button" then it would clear the screen and enable all the buttons again, for the answer steal.
You can do it with modern WebSocket or applications interact via TCP. However, WebSocket may be overkill for the simple application with a few teams. I faced the same problem before and developed a simple solution with PHP using Flock to write into a shared file on disk. Only request from one team gets the chance to write into that file. Stick to not to use WebSocket, the web page on client site does some polling to receive the "restart" signal from the server for the new question/round. It can run in LAN, different team gets different site, i.e. http://[server-ip]/team1, http://[server-ip]/team2.
You can have control over the round: allow them to press button/ restart, start a new question in http://[server-ip]/admin.
Further improvement can be made in several ways to facilitate your needs (i.e. assign team name, register team, use database instead of a flock file). The code is available here : https://github.com/minhhn2910/buzzergameshow

Adding a interactive gui to my VB.net application

OK. So first, I will try my best to explain so good. My friend has gotten cursed out on this forum for not explaining, so I will explain. :)
Ok so I have my program built and all. But then it hit me! Wouldn't it be better to add a news feature? One teeny tiny problem? I cant? How would I implement a interactive code into an HTML page.
Like can i connect a button to a URL that will make the program do something. Almost like you can open cydia tweaks with there identifier and url EXAMPLE: http://handleopenurl.com/scheme/cydia And then i can add urls so i can update the program, without updating the files.
Or even just a featured news thing would be nice. But how would i implement this perfectly. I tryed a webrowser, but the page is too big for it. I am good at html, not much at css, i mostly use Adobe Muse http://www.adobe.com/Muse
Last question. Kinda defies the first thing i said about having my program finished.
Is there a way i can add a plus button and make it add more buttons and more labels and all?
This would help with allowing users to customize more then what the program can handle. By The Way, its a winter board Theme Maker. So I have a bunch of icons with there bundle identifiers and I create the folders with VB.net and all that stuff. But i want users to be able to click a plus button to add MORE text boxes and file browsers.
Any ideas? Maybe DIM 1 as NewFileBrowser? But i need to move all the buttons and i need it to be able to be clicked an infinity amount of times. I can do the coding for all of these buttons, but i jest need to know how to create them <1 Move them and the button so that the button goes further down each time, and more boxes will go further down. Much help apreciated. THANKS:)
EDIT:
Are you trying to say that you're wondering how to have a web browser control in a vb.net >app, which displays a web page, and when a button is clicked on the page, your app detects >it and does something? – Thraka
That sums up the top part. I am using windows forms, and it is coded in VB.net
If you get the object you want, like the button, you can hook the event and have it call code in your form.
Find the object using the Browser.Document.GetElementById method.
With that object, add an event handler to the Click event.
See http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/system.windows.forms.htmlelementeventhandler(v=vs.110).aspx for information about the event handler used

How to tell if a control is no longer visible to the user?

I have a control in which I repeatedly run some animations (e.g. DoubleAnimation). Can I detect if my control is no longer visible to the user? E.g it gets scrolled away from, the user navigates forward to another page, or it gets obscured behind other controls.
I don't want to run those animations unless at least some part of my control is visible for the user.
You could analyze the visual tree or get a transform from control coordinates to screen coordinates to see if its positioning is within the view port and also check things like opacities, visibilities etc. of controls down the visual tree path, but that is so processing intensive that it is not worth doing all the time for a general solution.
The only thing that would make sense is to handle the ScrollViewer.ViewChanged event and check if the offsets make it visible or not while limiting the TransformToVisual or VisualTreeHelper calls only to times when the actual layout within your ScrollViewer changes.

swing: saving dialog box resize dimensions

I have a dialog box with a bunch of dimensions that a user can change by moving/dragging, including a JTable with resizable/draggable columns.
What I would like to do is to make the state of these resizable columns / dialog boxes / etc. persistent, so the next time my application starts up, the user doesn't have to go through the resizing step all over again.
What's the most convenient way to do this?
You should probably take a look at the code in (the now probably dead) JSR-296. A part of it was focused on persistent session state, and I know for sure that the code for persisting window locations and such was already functional and in the basic framework. It should either already do what you want, or provide a good starting point.
Cfr. dev.java.net site for JSR-296