REQUEST: GUI Interface Objects -- "Check Box" and "Push Button"

Check Box -- Alternative to Boolean Toggle. Great for turning options on and off with a single click. Much cleaner and more sensible in a control panel interface.

Push Button -- For those "do once" kinds of actions, like baking with a script, launching an application, or writing to a database. Push it once and it sends a True signal, followed by a False signal. No more telling my students/colleagues to "double click to set to true, and then double click again immediately to make sure you don't have your bake script running all the time". This is very confusing to beginners and still causes problems with experienced users who have a forgetful moment.

If you released these components I would immediately go through all my key definitions and start updating all of my control panels.

Thanks,

Marc

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Andy Payne on June 7, 2012 at 12:09pm

Hey Marc,

I like your suggestions (and have often thought these would be good additions). As for the push button option... you may want to try out the Bang component in Firefly. You need to connect a timer component to it (I guess I could build in a timer mechanism into the actual component... but nevertheless). When you feed it a True boolean toggle, it will propagate a True value out of the T-output, followed by a False value. The speed of how fast it can stay True before resetting back to false can be controlled with the Timer interval. Anyway, I think this will do what you're asking for (although there may be a more elegant GUI way to do this). Check it out and let me know if this does what you're thinking.

-Andy

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on June 7, 2012 at 4:14pm

Done. A new toggle object has replaced the old one. It has two modes; Toggle and Button. One flips the value once, the other twice. Hit area is coloured based on which mode is active. Toggle mode is default.

David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Poprad, Slovakia

Permalink Reply by Marc Syp on June 7, 2012 at 4:37pm

Great!

In the interest of graphic minimalism... can we eliminate the True/False language from the button?

You could easily find a graphic device that would work for either mode. Perhaps a drop shadow that implies relief when depressed. In Toggle mode it would "stick", and in Button mode, it would just be depressed during the mouse event.

Perhaps an option to turn on/off the True False feedback. For me, I'm interested in the cleanliness of the control panel, but I could see where it would be nice to have the option to have the text feedback inherently in the button...

Thanks,

Marc

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on June 7, 2012 at 4:53pm

The button now toggles whatever state is active. I.e., you can temporarily create a False or a True value. If I don't draw the current value, then the button should always be False, except when depressed. Is this preferable?

David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Poprad, Slovakia

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on June 7, 2012 at 4:54pm

In fact, if this is the case then the button behaviour is sufficiently different from the Toggle behaviour to warrant it being a different object entirely.

David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Poprad, Slovakia

Permalink Reply by Marc Syp on June 7, 2012 at 4:59pm

Yeah, you're right. I was thinking of a button state that is always false except when depressed, and that's why I was thinking of a separate objects for the button, check mark/switch, and boolean toggle. I think you could combine the first two (button and switch) but maybe not all three (boolean toggle lives on separately)...

Permalink Reply by David Rutten on June 8, 2012 at 4:14am

I added a second object called "Button". By default it has False for unpressed and True for pressed, but you can assign any expression to those states.

MouseDown means set the Pressed state, MouseUp will restore the unpressed state.

David Rutten

david@mcneel.com

Poprad, Slovakia

Permalink Reply by Andy Payne on June 8, 2012 at 5:48am

Nice!

Permalink Reply by Ángel Linares on June 8, 2012 at 6:06am

Awesome! It smell like a new realease soon :D

Permalink Reply by Danny Boyes on June 8, 2012 at 6:35am

I love the smell of New Release in the morning

Permalink Reply by Andrew Kudless on June 8, 2012 at 9:36am

Very helpful! I've unfortunately fallen into the trap Marc described above way too many times. The combination of Kangaroo and Lunchbox gets me every time and I end up with hundreds of baked objects at every tick of the timer. The new Button will be perfect for this. Thanks!

Permalink Reply by Benjamin Golder on July 6, 2012 at 9:17am