About the Window painter

Views in the Window painter

You design windows in the Window painter. The Window painter has several views where you specify how a window looks and how it behaves. The Window painter looks similar to the User Object painter for visual user objects, and it has the same views. For details about the views, how you use them, and how they are related, see “Views in painters that edit objects”.

Window painter workspace

The default layout for the Window painter workspace has two stacked panes with the Layout and Properties views at the top of the stacks.

Figure 10-2: Default view layout for the Window painter

Shown is the default layout for the Window painter. At left is the Layout tab page, which displays the content of the selected window. At right is the General tab page of the Properties view with text fields for title and tag, a drop down list labeled Menu Name, and check boxes for Visible, Enabled, Title Bar, Close, Max, Smart Minimize, and Client Edge. Additional property fields are not visible in this picture.

Most of your work in the Window painter is done in three views:

The Layout view, where you design the appearance of the window
The Properties view, where you set window properties and control properties
The Script view, where you modify behavior by coding window and control scripts

For information about specifying window properties, see “Defining the window's properties”.

For information about adding controls and nonvisual objects to a window, see “Adding controls” and “Adding nonvisual objects”.

For information about coding in the Script view, see “Writing scripts in windows” and Chapter 6, “Writing Scripts.”

Displaying device skins at design time

You can display windows inside a device skin at design time in the Window painter by selecting an XML file containing a device skin definition on the General tab of the Options dialog box. (You open this dialog box from the Window painter’s Design>Options menu.) Clicking the browse button on the General tab displays a file selection dialog box. The file you select in the file selection dialog box is automatically entered in the Current Skin text box on the General tab of the Options dialog box.

The PocketBuilder setup program installs two generic skin files that you can use in the Window painter to frame the windows you create at design time. The Generic_Phone_Skin.xml file lets you display windows in a generic Smartphone skin and the Generic_PPC_Skin.xml file lets you display windows in a generic Pocket PC skin. The setup program installs these files in the PocketBuilder Support\IDE_Skins directory. .

After you select a skin and click the Show Skin button, all windows that you subsequently open in the Window painter are displayed in the selected skin—and the windows are repositioned inside the skin.You can remove the skin by clicking the Hide Skin button.