What with all this news for our .NET platforms, I wouldn’t want our Delphi customers to feel left out in the cold. So, without further ado, let’s take a look at the new VCL Alert Window control that will debut in v2011 vol 2 later on this year. An Alert Window is a window that appears, usually with some kind of animation (the standard is that it pops up like a piece of toast from a toaster from the bottom left of the screen), to alert the user to some situation.
(Click image for animation.)
Pretty simple in concept and very effective at getting some important information in front of the user.
We’ve provided many options for animation, and you can apply separate options to both the showing and to the hiding of an alert window. These include:
- Animation effect: namely Slide, Fade, Move, and None.
- Pop-up position: either near the Windows notification area or one of the screen corners.
- Animation direction: all four directions are supported: up (“toaster” type), down, left (shown in the video), and right. The animation path depends on the pop-up position, but it’s always either vertical or horizontal.
- Animation time: this allows you to extend or shorten the animation.
We’ve also provided some other options to help you customize the alert windows:
- Capability to display custom buttons in a window’s footer.
- Visibility of caption buttons (there are three: a dropdown menu (currently supporting TPopupMenu, so it can provide pretty much anything you want), pin, and close).
- Auto-snap alert windows to screen edges during drag operations.
- Auto-hide alert windows after a specified time.
- Auto-size alert windows by content (limits are adjustable) or you can specify the exact height and width.
- Limit the number of simultaneously displayed alert windows.
- Skin support (duh!).
All in all, a nice addition to our VCL subscription for v2011 vol 2.