Ok guys - I probably rushed this out a bit early and didn't do the documentation very well, but this is my first attempt at a plugin and I personally think it is quite useful in its current form.
Let's just be clear - this plugin simply
generates a scrollbar image to indicate the current page in a category and the amount of the category that is being viewed
At the moment it does not implement any kind of actual scrolling functionality by clicking or dragging it.
I find that in quite a few of the default xlobby screens it is not always obvious which way you need to move the cursor to scroll a category (left/right or up/down) - by adding a scrollbar image it is then very obvious which key to press to scroll a category, and also whether you are near the top or bottom and roughly how much of the database you are actually viewing.
I have updated the zip file (
http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/skilling/xlobby/release/Xscrollbar_v1_6th_Jan_2006.zip) which now has my music and musicsearch screens in it to use with the latest default xlobby skin - copy these to the default skin to see the plugin in action.
Here are some better instructions... (a full example for the pictures screen)
1) Extract the contents of the zip file to ...\plugins\Xscrollbar
2) Go to the screen where you want to add the scrollbar (i.e. pictures screen)
3) open the Skin editor (Pause/Break)
4) Go to the tab Screen>Add
5) Add a new text zone with the text
- Code: Select all
plugin>xscrollbar>vertical>pictures>pic_scroll
(vertical is the scrollbar orientation - must be 'vertical' or 'horizontal'
pictures is the category name we want to associate the scrollbar to
pic_scroll is the button_id we are going to use)
6) You will find a text zone has been added in the top left of the screen showing the text
'Cannot find button_id: pic_scroll' This is because we have not yet given the button it's ID.
7) Select the text in the top left of the screen and go to Item>Default
8.) Enter the ID as
pic_scroll
9) You should now have a scrollbar which you can resize and move to where you want it displayed.
The size of the zone represents the track that the scrollbar will scroll in (i.e. the max size of the scrollbar when looking at a 1 page database that cannot scroll anywhere.)
10) You can now add another rectangle to surround the scrollbar to give it a proper visual track to run in...
I mentioned in my first post that I have some ideas of further enhancements.
This is basically to enable full scrolling functionality with clicking and dragging similar to windows scrollbars. This would include a few things...
a) Change scrollbar image when mouse hovers over the scrollbar to a '..._enter.png' image. This would probably be a change of color but would be entirely skin dependent and would use an image file as the current scrollbar does.
b) When the actual bar is pressed change to a '_down.png' image and allow the scrollbar to scroll while the mouse button is still pressed.
This does prove a bit of an issue because if you have, for example, only a 3 page category then the scrollbar can actually only be in one of three positions (first third, second third or third third) as xlobby only allows me to control which page we are on and not exactly which item is displayed at the start of the page.
Would this be satisfactory for those that want a fully working scrollbar?
c) If you click above or below the actual bar then this would implement a page up or page down.
Is the above exactly how you would like to see it working or have I missed anything?
If there is enough interest in developing this further then I think I will be able to get it working but it will involve quite a bit more work. Let me know what you think.
by m_ski on Sat Jan 07, 2006 12:09 am 
