Adobe 12040118 Using Help - Page 198

Adobe After Effects Help Using Help Creating User Interface Elements Back 198 Creating a window To create a new window, use the Window constructor function. The constructor takes the desired type of the window (dialog) as a parameter. You can supply optional arguments to specify an initial window title and bounds. The code examples provided in the JavaScript Interface section consist of short segments from a complete script that is included later in this document. The examples presented build upon each other. The following example creates an empty dialog with the variable name dlg. This dialog is carried though to subsequent examples: // Create an empty dialog window near upper left of the screen var var dlg = new Window('dialog', 'Alert Box Builder', [100,100,480,245]); dlg.show(); .Newly created windows are initially invisible; the show() method makes them visible. Roughly speaking, the numeric parameters to the constructor correspond to the top left and bottom right coordinates of the window. The bounds supplied when creating the dialog specify the requested size of the client area, which is the area of the dialog on which you can create controls. It does not include the title bar and borders around the client area. The size and position of the dialog as a whole are automatically adjusted to maintain the requested client area size. For a more detailed description of window bounds, see "Element size and location" on page 198. Container elements All windows are containers, which is to say that they contain other elements such as panels, buttons, and checkboxes within their boundaries. Within a window, you can create other types of container elements and add interface components to them, just as you add elements to a window. Elements added to a container are considered children of that container, and certain operations performed on a container element also apply to its children. For instance, calling the container's hide() method makes the container invisible and makes all of its visible children invisible as well. Along the same lines, calling the container's show() method makes the container visible as well as any child elements that were visible before the container was hidden. The following properties and methods of containers also apply to all children of that container: visible, enabled, hide(), show(). Element size and location To set the size and location of windows and controls, use the bounds property. As is typical when working with window systems, the location of a window is defined as the point (pair of coordinates) where the top left corner of the window is specified in the screen coordinate system. Using Help Back 198