October 31, 2006 What you want... When you want it Volume 06.5
Something Scary for Halloween
Halloween 2006 – It hasn’t been long since our last newsletter and the release of Build 9163; however, we just had to share a few new Tricks recently added to PxPlus. By now, you have probably seen some of the new graphical features that Windows has to offer, such as, semi-transparent windows, windows with custom shapes, and Widgets. Well, given that it is Halloween, we figured we owed you a Treat or two from the PxPlus goodie bag.
Let me introduce you to our Halloween mascot, Spooky. He's not much to look at but what he can do with all our new PxPlus features is pretty amazing – some might even say downright scary.

Shaped Windows:

First off, let's use Spooky to show us how to create a non-rectangular window. In fact, let's make him our window. While this might seem a bit tricky at first -- PxPlus makes it easy.

We will start by creating a Dialogue window in which he will reside and then we will center him on the screen:

! Spooky --- Halloween 2006
print 'show'(-1),
print 'dialogue'(5,5,10,7,"",'_green'),'SR','CS',
print 'option'("CENTERWDW",""),

Now, we will draw Spooky. Pretty simple really, just an Oval with the bottom cut off and two red circles for eyes.

print 'CS','fill'(1,7),'circle'(@x(5),@y(5),@x(5),.8)
print 'fill'(1,1),
print 'circle'(@x(3.1),@y(3.2),@x(1)),
print 'circle'(@x(6.9),@y(3.2),@x(1)),

Spooky wouldn't look too scary; if he was always trapped inside a Window. Let’s remove the frame so that he can get out.

print 'option'("FRAME","NONE"),

And now, we can remove the Background which we had initially set to Green (we will save that one for St. Patrick’s day.)		  

print 'option'("MASKCOLOUR","DEFAULT"),

Now, let’s make him fully transparent and slowly fade Spooky into view.

print 'option'("TRANSPARENCY","100"),'show'(3),
for i=95 to 50 step -2
print 'option'("TRANSPARENCY",str(i)),
wait .1
next

Using the new "XYPOS" parameter in the FIN and 'OPTION' mnemonics, Spooky is now ready to float around the screen.

There you have it! A semi-transparent Spooky ghost floating around your screen – wishing you a Happy Halloween.

(Download the full source at http://theplus.pvxplus.com/samples/spooky.zip)

Wait, more Treats in store

Not only did we give you the ability to have shaped semi-transparent windows, but we also integrated these features into our latest version by giving you Toaster style popup windows, Fade-in/out windows and built in support for Widgets in Nomads.

Check out the following for more details:

  
Build 9163.1 now available

  • Transparent and shaped windows
  • Built-in Widget support in Nomads
  • Data Encryption using industry standard ciphers
  • A faster Application Server on Unix
  • Native 8-bit Unicode support using UTF-8
  • Multiple record formats on your data files
  • New ability to create your own controls or enhance existing ones
  • Direct pixel addressing

... PLUS much much more

Click here for details
 
 
 
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