Wednesday, April 28, 2010

Wait Timer for Commands in TaskDialog library

I’ve got several requests to implement timer functionality in TaskDialog commands. The latest code drop contains requested changes. This is a preliminary design and I invite a discussion on implementation which would cover the most common use cases.
Here are the main points of current implementation:
  • TaskDialog.Command interface now includes getWaitInterval function which should return required wait interval in seconds.
  • TaskDialog.StandardCommand by default returns 0, but includes new variant of the derive function with additional waitInterval parameter. This allows for adding custom commands with specified wait interval.
How would we do it with our very convenient methods from TaskDialogs class? By passing special commands with instruction text. Following will show a warning dialog with wait interval of 10 seconds.




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This works on all TaskDialogs methods except choice and showException. My current feeling is that more work is required to make it perfect.
As always… Your comments and suggestions are welcome :) The project is available at http://code.google.com/p/oxbow under BSD license.

Saturday, April 24, 2010

Swing TaskDialog 1.0 official release

It is my pleasure to announce the availability of the official release of TaskDialog library version 1.0.
This release includes following features:
  • Implementation of Microsoft TaskDialog standard.
  • Support for additional custom components
  • Standard and Custom commands
  • Support for Command Links
  • i18n support
  • Customizable UI defaults
  • Simplified utility methods for common cases
  • Support for Mac OS X
The project is available at http://code.google.com/p/oxbow under BSD license.As always your comments and suggestions are welcome.

Sunday, April 18, 2010

Swinging Task Dialog (part 5)

This morning I uploaded the new release of TaskDialog library 1.0RC. I consider it a release candidate because all features planned for version 1.0 are now implemented. This release adds ability to produce dialogs with command links and many small enhancements and optimizations to the library.

Command Links

This is the last feature I had in my plan for the final release of the library and it proved to be the hardest to accomplish. I spent last 3 weeks working on it and now I think it is ready for general consumption :)
From the API point of view implementing command link based task dialog is very simple.



This produces the following dialog

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It is possible to pass the custom icon into command link. By default standard “green arrow” icon is shown. All the text on command link obeys overrall style rules of the dialog and can be expressed in HTML.
Overall look and feel on Windows tries to closely resemble current Windows standard. Mac OS UI guidelines do not specify anything similar to the command links so framework resorts to the use of standard buttons.

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I’m planning the final release of TaskDialog 1.0 library in one week if no serious issues will be found.
The project is available at http://code.google.com/p/oxbow/ under BSD license. As always ??? comments and suggestions are welcome.