Favorite methods for UI development?

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zold

I've just added a new script to my ae scripts page. It is designed exclusively for After Effects script developers, and aids in the creation of user interface windows.

Have at it!

http://www.crgreen.com/aescripts
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monter
Posts: 21
Joined: July 15th, 2004, 1:03 am
Location: Russia, Moskow
Contact:

1. Run Resource Hacker
2. Open Zagotovka.res
http://aeclub.net/forums/index.php?act= ... ost&id=215
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3. Edit User Interfase
4. Save Recourse File *.rs
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5. Open AE and run script CreateDialogFromResurse.jsx
http://aeclub.net/forums/index.php?act= ... ost&id=342

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Enjoy!
Last edited by monter on April 10th, 2006, 3:23 am, edited 1 time in total.
zold

monter wrote:1. Run Resource Hacker

Enjoy!
I would enjoy it, if I were not primarily an OSX user! Thanks for the info. Looks like a very cool tool.

Hey, monter, do you know about weird bugs with Windows having problems correctly displaying/handling control objects within panels? Some people (well, one person at least) has reported my selected comps changer script becomes unusable because the panels break all the controls that sit within them (whether children of the panels or not).

Thanks again

CG
vidpat
Posts: 86
Joined: October 21st, 2004, 12:36 am
Location: Phoenix, AZ
Contact:

The UI implementation, at least in 6.5, really isn't great. I don't know if this is to what you are referring, zold, but (on Windows) I've noticed two problems:

Controls that overlap initially appear stacked in the order that they were instantiated. For example, in my UIChooser, any buttons or controls that occur below the Chooser will display over the dropdown, when it appears, until the buttons in the dropdown are moused over. I guess this is a reasonable implementation, if there were a way to override the z-order in which the controls are drawn.

More problematic, any controls added to a Panel are not clipped by the Panel. They continue to be drawn under the Panel border and spill out to unwanted areas. This makes using a scrollbar (on a Panel) unworkable.
zold

vidpat wrote: Controls that overlap initially appear stacked in the order that they were instantiated. For example, in my UIChooser, any buttons or controls that occur below the Chooser will display over the dropdown, when it appears, until the buttons in the dropdown are moused over. I guess this is a reasonable implementation, if there were a way to override the z-order in which the controls are drawn.
No such problem exists on OSX, which makes my job doing reliable cross-platform scripts rather annoying. I'm very curious about how different versions of Windows treat the drawing and functionality of these objects. Since launching my script page, I have had a couple of reports of screwed up UIs only in Windows, and the bugs seem pretty difficult to deal with, and not logically workaround-able*. Panels seem to screw up controls no matter what order they are instantiated -- at least this is what I found recently, but this could be one version of windows -- and who knows if the person helping me out (I don't have a Windows box) had some sort of third-party interface stuff making things weird. I ended up sending him a version of the ('Selected Comps Changer') script with no panels (had to re-position a formerly parented radio group), and that version now works fine for him. But ... yuck.
vidpat wrote: More problematic, any controls added to a Panel are not clipped by the Panel. They continue to be drawn under the Panel border and spill out to unwanted areas. This makes using a scrollbar (on a Panel) unworkable.
Hm. I haven't yet messed around much with scrollbars or popups. In fact, I don't think I want to.

Thanks for the input!

CG

(p.s. - so what do you use for script writing?)

*sorry; that's a terrible word
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monter
Posts: 21
Joined: July 15th, 2004, 1:03 am
Location: Russia, Moskow
Contact:

Has corrected. Has added editing in program Resource Builder.
http://www.resource-builder.com/
Problems only the Panel in the Panel

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CreateDialogFromResourceAE70.rar

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zold

I think what you're saying (sorry, I know there's a language barrier here, and my russian/ukrainian is really bad) is that this resource builder thing is better than the previous suggestion (resource hacker). As I said, though - I'm on OSX, not Windows, so my favorite method is using my Comp_To_UI.jsx script and jEdit (which are both free anyway).

I just wish I'd get more feedback from people using my scripts ...
I'd especially appreciate any information about some of these bad Windows UI object problems.
I suspect it is only on some versions ... (?) (how many "modern" versions of Windows are there, anyway? How many versions of XP?)

CG
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