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REALbasic for Dummies
by Erick Tejkowski

Learning REALbasic through Applications
by Clayton E., Crooks II

REALbasic for Macintosh
by Michael Swaine

REALbasic Cross-Platform Application Development
by Mark S. Choate

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Design
There are really only two parts to creating a preferences window with this design. There are the toolbar items which are used to select from the panes, and then there are the preference panes themselves. Since we're going to want to switch between multiple panes in a single window, we'll use a PagePanel to hold the panes and multiple ToolbarItem controls to select the panes.

Window Resizing
As I said before, we need to know the heights of the individual preference panes so we can resize the window accordingly. To do this, create a new module named "PrefsStuff" and add the constants in the window below. In addition to knowing the heights of the panes, we'll need a way to resize the window. Now while we could simply use a single line of code like "Main.Height = kDockPanelHeight" that's not very fancy since the window is instantly resized. If you take a look at System Preferences, you'll notice that the window smoothly resizes. To do this, we'll use a method from the Carbon Declare Library called SmoothResize. The code for SmoothReisize is below. Add it to your PrefsStuff module.

Sub SmoothResize(w as window, width as integer, height as integer, align as integer) // Added 11/13/2001 by Jarvis Badgley // Edited 12/05/2001 by Jarvis Badgley // Modified 2/3/2002 by Kevin Ballard // --- // Rewritten 2/22/2002 by Kevin Ballard // Based off of code by Jean-Francois Roy <bahamut@mac.com> // --- // Modified 8/23/02 by Kevin Ballard // Modified 12/14/02 by Pedro fp <lists@pedro.Net.au> // Modified 12/14/02 by Kevin Ballard // // Align numbers: // 0) Lock upper left // 1) Lock upper right // 2) Lock lower left // 3) Lock lower right // 4) Lock top center // 5) Lock left center // 6) Lock bottom center // 7) Lock right center #if Target68k then // No 68k code #else dim err, t, l as integer dim rect as MemoryBlock #if TargetCarbon then Declare Function TransitionWindow Lib "CarbonLib" (window as WindowPtr, effect as Integer, action as Integer, rect as Ptr) as Integer Declare Function GetWindowBounds Lib "CarbonLib" (window As WindowPtr, regionCode As Integer, globalBounds As Ptr) as Integer #else Declare Function TransitionWindow Lib "WindowsLib" (window as WindowPtr, effect as Integer, action as Integer, rect as Ptr) as Integer Declare Function GetWindowBounds Lib "WindowsLib" (window As WindowPtr, regionCode As Integer, globalBounds As Ptr) as Integer #endif // we get the old window region rect = NewMemoryBlock(8) err = GetWindowBounds(w, 32, rect) t = w.Top // Need to know where the top and left of the window go l = w.Left Select Case align // Use deltas in measurements, not absolutes Case 0 // Lock upper left rect.Short(4) = rect.Short(4) + (height - w.height) rect.Short(6) = rect.Short(6) + (width - w.width) Case 1 // Lock upper right rect.Short(2) = rect.Short(2) - (width - w.width) rect.Short(4) = rect.Short(4) + (height - w.height) l = l - (width - w.width) // Left side moves Case 2 // Lock lower left rect.Short(0) = rect.Short(0) - (height - w.height) rect.Short(6) = rect.Short(6) + (width - w.width) t = t - (height - w.height) // Top side moves Case 3 // Lock lower right rect.Short(0) = rect.Short(0) - (height - w.height) rect.Short(2) = rect.Short(2) - (width - w.width) t = t - (height - w.height) // Top side moves l = l - (width - w.width) // Left side moves Case 4 // Lock top center rect.Short(2) = rect.Short(2) - (width - w.width) / 2 rect.Short(4) = rect.Short(4) + (height - w.height) rect.Short(6) = rect.Short(6) + (width - w.width) / 2 l = l - (width - w.width)/2 // Both sides move Case 5 // Lock left center rect.Short(0) = rect.Short(0) - (height - w.height) / 2 rect.Short(4) = rect.Short(4) + (height - w.height) / 2 rect.Short(6) = rect.Short(6) + (width - w.width) t = t - (height - w.height) / 2 // Top moves Case 6 // Lock bottom center rect.Short(0) = rect.Short(0) - (height - w.height) rect.Short(2) = rect.Short(2) - (width - w.width) / 2 rect.Short(6) = rect.Short(6) + (width - w.width) / 2 t = t - (height - w.height) // Top moves l = l - (width - w.width) / 2 // Left moves Case 7 // Lock right center rect.Short(0) = rect.Short(0) - (height - w.height) / 2 rect.Short(2) = rect.Short(2) - (width - w.width) rect.Short(4) = rect.Short(4) + (height - w.height) / 2 t = t - (height - w.height) / 2// Top moves l = l - (width - w.width) // Left moves End Select // If none of these, don't change // transition err = TransitionWindow(w, 3, 4, rect) // have to manually set the window's new height after resizing the window w.Top = t w.Left = l w.Width = width w.Height = height w.refresh #endif // Target68k End Sub

Changing Panes
To change panes, we will create a new method in the Main window named "ChangePanes" which will accept a single parameter "newPane as integer" which will be the index value of the pane we're going to switch to. We first use the SmoothResize method with the appropriate constant for the pane's height to resize the window, set the window's title to that of the current preference pane, and then change the PanesPanel's value to show the new pane. Showing the pane (by changing the PanesPanel.Value) before the window is resized looks odd, which is the reason that we resize then show the new pane.

The first parameter of the SmoothResize method is the window which is being resized, the second is the new width of the window (which in our case is the same as the old width, 595), the third is the new height, and the last parameter specifies from which corner the window is being resized. See the SmoothResize method for more info.

And since when our window first opens it should open to one of the panes, we set the default pane in the main window's Open event by calling ChangePane 0.

When the user clicks on any one of the ToolbarItems, the PrefsTBItem's Action event fires which is where we then change the pane. Since the index value of the ToolbarItem in the PrefsTBItem control array is the same as the index of the pane's page in the PanesPanel, we can simply call ChangePane Index to change the preference pane.

The Finished Product
Below is the final result. Now we have a pretty cool looking and functioning preferences window! You can download the project here.