How are you emulating radio buttons?

[IVB]

Seemingly innocent questions from the newcomers send me down the coolest ratholes. Rodaeent asked how I was emulating radio buttons, or rather, how he could. The specific goal was to show each Denon zone, the list of sources, and highlight which source was playing. If that source switched, either via CQC or directly, then change the highlighted color automatically.

Scratched my head, looked at what some other folks were doing, here's what I looked at.:

Options:
1) Create an image-less command button widget for each option. Then, create a boolean image widget and put underneath the command button widget. I.E., for the DVD source, Have a true value of IsEqual=DVD, and false value of NotEqual=DVD
2) Use a checkbox widget.

I was having some issues getting the checkbox widget to work, probably user error, cuz it seems to me that they both should be identical, right?

Anyhow, I got it all working cuz I was just too darn curious. Screen loads a little slow (1-2 seconds) cuz of all the dang widgets, but still works just fine once loaded.

How are y'all doing this?

[jscheller]

Dean walked me through a similar problem with my HVAC control screen here...

http://www.charmedquark.com/vb_forum/sho...ostcount=4

The push button just below the current temperature reading near the upperish right of each tstat display actually displays one of four states ("Heat" "Cool" "Heat+Cool" or "Off). I was in a bind because you can't change the text of the push button, and I couldn't use a boolean image widget behind a regular button because I had four different states.

To get this to work I wound up with a static image widget in the back ground for the button shape, then a dynamic text widget that gets set with the current value, then an image-less push button on top. The effect is basically the same as a push button that changes text labels. The only thing you don't get is the slight animation effect when you click the button.

And, yeah, it's a heck of a lot of widgets. But nothing like my alarm zone template... :-)

[Dean Roddey]

In 2.0 you can change the button text, so hopefully you can simplify that. Well, you can change it in an action. You can't have it display text from a field.

I guess I'm going to have to add some more widget types to handle this type of thing without layering a bunch of widgets.

[ellisr63]

Thanks Dean that will be real nice.