Tooltip for disabled controls

Claus Luethje Claus.Luethje at osys.ch
Thu Apr 4 14:59:52 PDT 2013 

You're correct, Tom. I meant, getting events on disabled controls was not necessary (= not needed in my projects). Showing a Tooltip on them is ok.
Sorry for the confusion.
Regards
Claus



Am 04.04.2013 um 23:42 schrieb "Tom Schindl" <tom.schindl at bestsolution.at>:

> I think we start to mix different things. Disabled control should NOT receive events but they should show tooltips. Disabled controls in SWT does not receive any events!
> 
> Tom
> 
> On 04.04.13 23:34, Philipp Dörfler wrote:
>> Eclipse shows tooltips for disabled buttons, too.
>> 
>> ~ philipp
>> 
>> Am 04.04.2013 um 23:08 schrieb Sven Reimers <sven.reimers at gmail.com>:
>> 
>>> Hi,
>>> 
>>> Well, looking at my favorite IDE (NetBeans Swing) I get tooltips on the
>>> disabled buttons in the toolbar (anybody interested in checking with
>>> Intellij or Eclipse?).
>>> 
>>> At least it seems as if Swing provides this feature - so is it really that
>>> bad design?
>>> 
>>> I have to check our own big Swing-based app, but I think I can follow
>>> Scott's idea - sometimes it is easy to guide the user by displaying info on
>>> hovering with the mouse (maybe this behavior gets deprecated with touch?)
>>> 
>>> So I am still in for a disucssion if this is technically feasible.
>>> 
>>> -Sven
>>> 
>>> P.S. I can see people coming from Swing saying - "JavaFX? No Tooltips on
>>> disabled controls? Even Swing did this by default" ;-)
>>> 
>>> 
>>> On Thu, Apr 4, 2013 at 8:08 PM, Scott Palmer <swpalmer at gmail.com> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> I find it bizarre that this is being considered as "bad design".  It
>>>> depends on how it is used.  Users find the feedback helpful. I use the
>>>> pattern extensively with positive results. It avoids confusion for the
>>>> users (always a good thing).
>>>> 
>>>> When I have a complex form, where some choices invalidate others, Tooltips
>>>> are great to explain why certain choices can't be made. You don't want to
>>>> hide the disabled controls because it is very useful information for the
>>>> user to see that the options can be available in some cases.  The form can
>>>> already be complex, so trying to fit these messages into the normal layout
>>>> just makes it awkward.
>>>> 
>>>> I also have cases where some options are simply read-only depending on the
>>>> situation.  For consistency I still show the same control as when they
>>>> aren't read-only.  The tooltip explains why the value can't be changed.
>>>> For TextField I can actually set it to non-editable. But for checkbox
>>>> there is no such option.
>>>> 
>>>> I think the concept of "disabled" on a Node is not the same concept as
>>>> disabled on a Control. For the Node case I agree with it not getting
>>>> events.  For the Control case I just don't want the control to be active.
>>>> 
>>>> I do have ways to workaround this for some controls. As mentioned, a
>>>> TextField can be made non-editable instead.  But with a button it's more of
>>>> a hack.
>>>> 
>>>> Of course *the framework shouldn't be dictating design* anyway.
>>>> 
>>>> That said, I expect the combination of me being out numbered and more
>>>> importantly the difficulty of the fix, means that I'm going to lose this
>>>> one.
>>>> 
>>>> Scott
>>>> 
>>>> On 2013-04-04, at 11:38 AM, "Will Hoover" <java.whoover at gmail.com> wrote:
>>>> 
>>>>> -1
>>>>> I don't think supporting the use of tooltips on disabled controls is a
>>>> good design pattern to follow (not to mention the overhead of typically
>>>> unnecessary event propagation). If the behavior is really desired they can
>>>> use option #3 or a similar solution using an icon/image with tooltip
>>>> adjacent to the control.
>>>>> 
>>>>> -----Original Message-----
>>>>> From: openjfx-dev-bounces at openjdk.java.net [mailto:
>>>> openjfx-dev-bounces at openjdk.java.net] On Behalf Of Pavel Safrata
>>>>> Sent: Thursday, April 04, 2013 9:34 AM
>>>>> To: openjfx-dev at openjdk.java.net
>>>>> Subject: Tooltip for disabled controls
>>>>> 
>>>>> Hello,
>>>>> we've got a request to support tooltips for disabled controls. Tooltip
>>>> can be used to explain why the control is disabled which sounds reasonable.
>>>> Jira: https://javafx-jira.kenai.com/browse/RT-28850
>>>>> 
>>>>> We have the disableProperty on Node. When a node is disabled, it is not
>>>> picked, so no mouse events are delivered to it, so tooltip can't be shown
>>>> as it is based on mouse events.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Perhaps not delivering events to a disabled node was a bad decision.
>>>>> First, there are use-cases where disabled node wants them (showing
>>>> tooltip). Second, for ignoring node during picking we have the
>>>> mouseTransparent flag and it would be nicer if these two flags were
>>>> orthogonal (the reason they're not is probably that mouseTransparent is
>>>> much younger). But the behavior can't be easily changed - controls, and
>>>> possibly other nodes in user apps, rely on the existing behavior.
>>>>> 
>>>>> There are three basic approaches.
>>>>> 
>>>>> 1. Make the events delivered to the disabled nodes. We would either
>>>> break backward compatibility (and fix controls), or introduce yet another
>>>> flag, something like pickIfDisabled. Then we would enable picking for the
>>>> disabled control which would make the tooltip work. But it would make the
>>>> entire control work, so we would somehow have to disable other event
>>>> handling for such controls.
>>>>> 
>>>>> 2. Don't change event delivery and rather introduce some control-layer
>>>> solution specific to tooltips. Maybe the disabled control registering a
>>>> special tooltip area on its parent or something like that.
>>>>> 
>>>>> 3. Do nothing and force users to workarounds like put the disabled
>>>> control into an enabled Pane and set the tooltip on the Pane. Sounds
>>>> horrible, especially for complex applications.
>>>>> 
>>>>> Thoughts? Ideas?
>>>>> 
>>>>> Thanks,
>>>>> Pavel
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> --
>>> Sven Reimers
>>> 
>>> * Senior Expert Software Architect
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>

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