Overlay in an Overlay triggered by Widget

[Deane Johnson]

I'm testing layout possibilities for my iPad client control. The easiest way to explain this is to link to a working simulator that reflects what I did with Elve. I want to use two overlays, one on top of the other.

The buttons on the bottom of the screen select the largest overlay, there is one for Theater, Blinds, Lighting, etc. When you choose Theater, you get the innerscreen (overlay) for theater, and on the left side of the "theater" screen are buttons that select the 2nd overlay which contains the specific controls for a piece of gear.

How do I do this with CQC. I have the rough things in place, what stopped me was how to get my CQC version of the "DVD" button to place the DVD control template in the smaller container.

Scroll to the bottom of this page and use your mouse to click on the buttons to execute the actions.

I believe the demo defaults to "Theater" so you don't need to bring it up, but you can run through the other sections in addition to "Theater" if you wish.

http://www.deanejohnson.com/johnsonhomet...ystem.html

BTW, I'm prepared to be told this approach is the wrong one.:-)

[Dean Roddey]

Since the buttons on the left are part of the template that includes the nested overlay, you'd do it just like you did the main overlay. Just give the center overlay a name, and have the buttons on the left (which are in the same template) send it commands to load up a new template. It doesn't even really know it's nested in an overlay already.

I guess one concept to keep in mind is that, when you load widgets into an overlay, they aren't just placed into the main template, they are still within that overlay object. They don't know about anything outside of that, and they can for the most part act the same as if they were the base (main) template, but whatever they do only affects the contents inside the overlay they were loaded into.

Except for the special case of global variables that the main template might have created (and which the inner content may depend) you could load the theater template as a top level template and it would basically work the same. The main viewer window is a container and the overlay is a container, and the stuff inside them don't really know or care which type of container they are in, except for some really special case stuff.

[Deane Johnson]

Thanks once again, I shall work on it.

I'm actually getting along pretty well. The learning curve of CQC is not as bad as might have been implied in postings. It's a lot like Elve in that respect, just more choices to understand.

[Dean Roddey]

Yeh, I repeat over and over that there's no 'programming' involved but I think that most folks don't really hear that and just assume that it's way harder than it really is.

Of course if you want to take any product to the nth degree of customization it will get complicated, and CQC allows for that. But I think that its reputation for complexity is overblown. Perhaps the fact that it allows very complex stuff to be done makes people think that that's the only way it can be used, I dunno.

[Deane Johnson]

I believe that to be true after working with it for a few days. I was almost convinced I should not try CQC, but that would have been a terrible mistake. It's just as learnable as Elve was, which had a reputation for being easy.

I think if one approaches software like this, be it CQC or the late Elve, the thing to do is learn the things that apply to your project and not worry about the others. You can learn those when you develop a need for them.