system style boolean indicator

[Neil.Pate]

Experts,

Does anyone have a nice tidy way of displaying a boolean indicator in a system style? A checkbox does not seem like a good idea to me as it implies the user is able to click on it and change it. I could disable and grey it but again this implies something different.

What I am after is a simple and neat method of displaying a boolean status to the user. I am using a small-ish boolean off the modern pallette at the moment, but it does not really fit in with the rest of the system scheme.

Thanks

Neil

[tst]

The easiest is probably to color the the control's border transparent.

If you want something slightly more complex, you can drop a modern LED, customize it, go into the parts editor, drop a system border, copy it to clipboard and then replace the boolean's border with it. You can also change the color of the LED to system colors (such as highlight), but that's not very good either.

The best one I found was placing it in a tab (which you can see on the right), but then you get the tab control. You can hide it by using an XControl, but then you have to manage the XControl.

[Neil.Pate]

thanks for the tips.

This is quite tricky actually.. I am trying to make a small indicator about the size of a checkbox. It seems that when using a tab there is a minimum size?

Also, having to make an XControl to hide the tab nature seems very Rube-ish 😉

[tst]

You can use the resize dialog to change the size of the tab to a smaller size.

[smercurio_fc]

You can also find a variety of stylized controls in the UI Interest Group.

[shew82 · Accepted solution]

Another option takes a bit of digging around in the control editor:

1. Create a new custom control, starting with a system listbox. Once dropped, change to Customize Mode (click the wrench/spanner in the toolbar), right click on the border of the list box and choose to copy to clipboard.

2. Create another new custom control, this time starting with a modern LED. Switch to the customize mode and right click on the border of the control and choose to paste from clipboard at the same size. 

3. Repeat for false as well as true and resize parts to suit.

4. I ended up with something like this:

[Neil.Pate]

I like this...

[tst]

Yes, definitely better. I didn't feel like going through all the system controls to see if one of them exposes the frame, so good call.