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Understanding Ideas Genie - Screens, Forms and Frames Issue date 21st Sept 2002
When you run a program what do you see. Screens?
Forms? Windows? Panes? Historically, in DOS, we had screens. Without
researching too much, “Forms” were once reports. Then we had Windows. Then we
developers had a quantum leap into OOP (Object Orientated Programming) and we
had to get out heads around “Forms” and many other new things like objects,
classes, methods and events. The breakthrough in the learning curve for me was
when I could relate, even in “loose” terms, something in the new to something
in the old. It didn’t take long to notice that “Forms” were NOT reports, they
were Screens!
To cut a very long story short, I refer to
“them” as screens in Ideas Genie documentation. If you are a “Forms” person,
substitute what Ideas Genie refers to as “Screens” with “Forms”
Screen
Sets (Form Sets)
There's only one instance
of a Screen set in Ideas Genie. The three Global Editing screens GA004S30PC
(Plant Care), GA004S30GC (Culture/Properties) and GA004S30PD (plant dimensions)
form a screen set.
From a user point of view,
because they are part of a Screen Set, you can switch from one to the other and
"keep your place" in each screen.
After you have completed
all our recommended starter tutorials, try this. Edit a plant using GA004 or
GA022 and navigate to the “Culture Properties” screen in the “Global Editing”
screen set. There are two primary navigation buttons on each screen, one with
an arrow pointing Left, the other with an arrow pointing right.
Screen Arrow
Pointing Left Arrow Pointing Right
Culture(/Property) Grades Height Care
Care Culture Sizes
Sizes Care Culture
All the torturous
programming was done so you could keep clicking in on, say, the right button,
and rotate seamlessly through all three screens.
Incidentally, a whole Genus
of plants are listed when you reach this screen set, the idea being you can
apply a “Sunlight Requirements” change to a single plant, a complete species or
indeed the whole Genus with one click.
Programming wise,
especially in OOP, lets say “challenging”!
Page Frames
Don’t be alarmed by the description. Page
frames are very common in propriety visual software and you've seen and used
them before.
NORMALLY page frames appear as a little pile
of pages with index tabs protruding. You click on the relevant index tab to
make that page visible i.e. bring it to the top of the pile. We've found page
frames quite useful in Ideas Genie, though when you hit a screen page using
one, you will have to be prepared to spend that bit longer to get familiar with
it since a large percentage of the “business buttons” may not on the top page
of the pile.
Here’s an example in Ideas Genie. Start GA004 from the menu, find and double click on the name of any plant in the list box on the initial screen and you are into the Plant Profile screen GA004S02. The page frame is in the top right of the screen. The index tabs for the five pages in this frame set are 1) Sizes 2) Culture/Props 3) Care 4) Sources and 5) Specimens. In this case the frame set is a small area on a large screen. By clicking on the index tabs you can access a lot of detailed, related information, which would otherwise be difficult to present.
Another advantage is
that pages which are not applicable can be hidden. Here’s an example of this.
Screen GA004S20 – Plant
Photos. Start GA004 from the menu, type in Acer and double click on the line Acer
Japonicum ‘Aureum’. Click on photos in the Plant profile screen (GA004S02)
and in the list of photos for that plant click on my treasured photo with the
title “Spring Foliage”. The photo appears.
This screen has a
Pageframe with 5 pages. The Pageframe is almost the full size of the screen in
this case. The index tabs are labelled
"Photo", “Notes about this photo”, “Specimen Notes”, “Specimen
Profile”, and finally “Specimens”. In this frame set you can review all your
specimens and select which one (if any) is pictured and link it to the photo.
If you now repeat the
navigation process for Paeonia lactiflora ‘Nice Gal’ you’ll find there are only two pages,
“Photos” and “Notes about this photo”. The reason? We haven’t defined any
specimens for ‘Nice Gal’ in the “Mini database”
Page frames offer another
advantage. Depending on the reason for displaying the screen in the first
place, the appropriate page can be made visible on initiation. For example, in
GA004, when you are adding internet photos, the page “Notes about this photo”
is presented. After you have added the record and subsequently view it again,
the photo appears when the screen is initiated i.e. The page indexed
"Photo" is on top of the pile.
Earlier we capitalised
"NORMALLY". Page frames don’t always have Index Tabs. An example of
this is the "Slide Show – GA014" The slide show photos are run in a
page frame. When you pause in the slide show (in screen GA014S02), a bank of
buttons appear up the right hand side of the screen. These allow us more
flexibility in that some of the buttons "flick pages" in the frame
set e.g. Photo notes, whereas other buttons (e.g. Profile, Specimen) cascade
down into the common screen (GA100S09), to display and permit editing to your
plant notes and Specimen notes respectively.
Visually the options on the
screen appear more uniform (as buttons) and the photo, which appears in a page
of the page frame can be that little bit larger, since there are no index tabs.
Programming wise, more
time consuming but easy to control.
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