GUI Programming Standards

[xxxxmyxxxx]

Hi Im writing a simple GUI as a plug-in for other software Ive written. It calls for a few tabs and some option within each tab. Ive decided to use radio buttons to toggle the options within each tab but it seems that perhaps radio buttons were not mean to be used in this way. I do not have tons of experience with GUI programming and would like some advice about what type of control (if not radio buttons) would best suit my needs, which are as follows:

Under each tab there would be radio buttons

One radio button (lets call it R1) would be default and would have one set of stuff drawn to the window

If I click radio button 2 (R2) I would have another set of input & stuff drawn to the window and set 1 would disappear etc

It seems that the control_ID's for each set of stuff get used and re-used when I go from one radio button to another and things just dont quite workout. Sometimes things get stuck in the window when I choose one radio button over another, other times it goes into an infinite loop of creating the control.

Im stating to think that radio buttons are not the way to go with this. Please advise.

Thanks!

Edited July 3, 2011 by xxxxmyxxxx

[Melba23]

xxxxmyxxxx,

Welcome to the AutoIt forum.

As you have discovered, AutoIt reuses ControlIDs when controls are deleted and then recreated. This can be very useful in certain circumstances, but can also give problems if the numbers of deleted and recreated controls are not the same.

Some explanation. AutoIt stores its ControlIds in an internal array - the ControlID you get is actually the index of the element of the array holding the data for that control. AutoIt will always use the lowest available empty index to store the data for a newly created control (a very sensible policy to save space) but this means that if you delete a number of controls and then create a larger number you get the ControlIDs spread all over the array.

In your case, radio buttons seem to be the correct way to go to reconfigure the controls, but I assume you are deleting and recreating the various controls when you change the configuration. I would strongly suggest creating all the controls you will need initially and then using GUICtrlSetState($CID, $GUI_HIDE/SHOW) to make the ones you need visible. There are a number of tricks involving arrays you can use to optimise your code if you do it this way, but we can come to them later.

Give that a try. If you still have problems, please post your code as otherwise it is pretty hard offering anything other than very general advice.

M23