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  • Slider Widget, Color Picker Widget

    I could really use a slider widget and a color picker widget. I wished that their was an easy way to do this in AMS. I know that Windows has both a ‘slider’ widget, and a 'color picker' widget (AMS uses it) built in to the GUI. I’ll bet Mr. Worm could probably build a DLL to take care of it, his abilities with DLL’s are amazing.

    And Mr. Corey, I know both of these must be rather easy to do in Flash, as I’m able to find tons of free examples of them. I don’t have Flash, and frankly from the demo I checked out from the Macromedia site, it’s a little too expensive at the moment, both in terms of actual out of pocket expense, and it’s apparent learning curve.

    I’ve tried and tried but I just don’t seem to be able to find any of the Flash examples I can pass data from. I figure this must need to be programmed in on the Flash side, but I’m just guessing here.

    I’m building a graphics program. I use .bat files to make calls to a graphics library I found. I display the picture that the user is working on, in a Web Object. The whole thing works pretty well, but it would work better if the user could adjust things like picture brightness and color balance, ect. with a slider rather than the simple ‘Up’ and ‘Down’ buttons I now make them use.

    The color picker would let me allow them to pick the color for any ‘Overlays’ they might want to add to their picture.

    Your product is truly amazing. Here I am a script kitty that hasn’t written a program since I tinkered with Basic in the late 70’s- early 80’s, and now with AMS, PhotoShop, and a few graphics DLL’s, I’ve created a useable program at an amazing speed. I really like RAD tools with simple learning curves, I love AMS… I just wished there were more widgets, that were simple to connect with.

    I guess I fibbed, their might be a couple more cool features for future versions, but I’ll post those suggestions in the appropriate forum.

    All of you guys are great too, I really learned a lot about what cool tricks AMS can do by reading your answers to other people’s questions.

    Anyway, any suggestions, or help on the sliders, and color picker would be greatly appreciated. Thanks

  • #2
    Re: Slider Widget, Color Picker Widget

    Sounds like a cool project, help yourself to an *I'm a RAD dude* bumper sticker on the way out. [img]/ubbthreads/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

    Well it's the ooooold catch 22-eroo. To build more powerful software such as your graphics proggy you have to learn more, i.e. flash or whatever. the less you want to learn the less you can add.

    So the short answer is that there is a free color picker component for Flash which is pretty good and can easily pass data to AMS (or recieve data from AMS). But, being a Flash component one would have to have a little Flash knowledge to implement it.

    Ill tell you a really good simple solution for you is a javascript color picker (tons of free ones out there on the net, set one up so it uses the color hex number as an anchor link, i.e. #FFCC00) in a web object and then use the On Navigate Complete state of the web object to insert a WEB BROWSER > GET PROPERTY > URL to extract the selected color value.

    As to the slider, a cinch in Flash, again lots of free drag and drop slider components out there but you need to spend a weekend playing with Flash just to be safe vis-a-vis using them. [img]/ubbthreads/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

    Corey Milner
    Creative Director, Indigo Rose Software

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    • #3
      Re: Slider Widget, Color Picker Widget

      Wow! Thanks for the fast reply, don't they let you guys sleep? Thanks for the suggestion, I’ve seen several JavaScript color pickers out there, though my JavaScripting abilities aren’t much better than my Flash skills, lol.

      This probably hurts the ears of a real programmer as you seem to be, but I love the freedom that today’s tools bring. RAD tools such as AMS are incredible. Imagine how many lines of C, BASIC, PHP, PERL, JAVA, JavaScript, or any other language it would take (does take) when I click on the AMS toolbar and create some type of object.

      The end may not have as small of footprint as a program written by hand in C++, but with today’s multi-GHz machines, it runs faster than machine code of a few years ago.

      When I design for the Web, I use an editor with a GUI, for most of the HTML. I can find lots of examples of JavaScript, PHP, CGI, PERL, and more, that are both free, and well ‘remarked’ so that I can, with my limited coding ability, tweak them into what I really want them to do.

      All I really need is a basic understanding of Booleans, and I can turn out amazing things… With the right tools. I know I sound lazy, I should just learn how to program, but my current project includes code in nearly a dozen different languages. That’s way to much syntax to learn. Give me RAD!

      Thanks to desktop publishing in the 80’s, we have several fine programs that have low learning curves. Even my Dad can produce results that he’s happy with, using Print Shop or something.

      Programming just might be the next great wave. Imagine if even Mom’s and Dad’s could set down and create a program. Dad might not be quite ready for AMS yet, but you’re not all that far away either. As someone who has actually ‘read the fine manual’ and constantly uses your wonderful online Help files, it seems like most of the questions presented in these forums have already been answered, and in most cases, examples are provided.

      My point is, I’m not a Typesetter, yet with my little printer, I can print hard copy just like the big boys. With tools like AMS, even a script kitty like me can look sharp, on the desktop. Coding by hand sucks! I’ve had a misplaced comma bring down thousands of lines of good code, and took days to find and fix (a large flat file database in PERL).

      I admit it, I prefer the GUI (or should I say WIMP) over the command line (CLI). I prefer RAD tools like AMS, to coding by hand. I also quite appreciate to low learning curve that is required to really ‘get’ your program. PhotoShop is a great tool, but it took me years to get beyond the basics.

      I suppose that I should break down and buy Flash, then spend the six months or two years, or whatever it takes to learn how to use it. If I do, will I still need AMS? I’m not trying to be funny here. From what I’ve seen, I think that Flash can do most of what AMS can do, albeit at the expense of having to learn a more difficult programming language.

      I really like AMS and would be mostly satisfied having the chance to use pre-built Flash widgets, as an Object in AMS rather than having to learn yet another programming methodology.

      Sorry to rant. Thanks again for the quick reply and good suggestion. I’ll look into using a JavaScript color picker, I understand Hex color equivalents, but I’m lost when we talk about anchors. I think I’ll have to wait until tomorrow before I start my quest to delve a bit deaper into JavaScript, a few hours sleep might be good for the brain.

      Thanks again, you guys are awesome!

      Comment


      • #4
        Re: Slider Widget, Color Picker Widget

        An anchor link is just an HTML page link which begins with the prefix "#" such as #home or #email... [img]/ubbthreads/images/icons/smile.gif[/img] The idea of anchor links is when you want to navigate within the existing page as opposed to launching a new page, i.e. if you have a long page of text you can create sublinks within the text which you can use to navigate within the page, i.e. #news, #weather, #sports, etc...

        Corey Milner
        Creative Director, Indigo Rose Software

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        • #5
          Re: Slider Widget, Color Picker Widget

          Thanks Corey, I'm on the same page now. I knew anchors as 'bookmarks' from Frontpage.

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          • #6
            Re: Slider Widget, Color Picker Widget


            I'm on the same page now.
            Literally. [img]/ubbthreads/images/icons/smile.gif[/img] Cheers. [img]/ubbthreads/images/icons/smile.gif[/img]

            Corey Milner
            Creative Director, Indigo Rose Software

            Comment

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