Hi,

 My son and I are fairly new to Phrogram (though I am an old hand at programming) and I am finding the user interface capabilities of Phrogram programs a bit limiting for non-games type applications. I'd like to be able to use simple forms including things like radio buttons, check boxes, list boxes, text boxes etc. etc. from Phrogram. Is there any way to do this? Does anyone have any examples?

Thanks,   Chris

 

Phrogram does not natively support Windows GUI elements. However, it is very possible to make them from scratch.

An 'old hand' such as yourself may remember a time we used computers prior to a common GUI screen. (Think 8-bit programming) In those days, the programmer had to invent, create, and draw any and all graphics, as was needed for the application.  A few common elements 'bubbled' to the surface, and are now included in most 'proffessional' IDE's.  Someone had to write the code for those, what they do, how they behave, etc.  In Phrogram you can develop your own library of classes to mimic the GUI elements you want to use.  Think of it as a learning experience for the beginner....

For an example of a textbox, see this post: http://phrogram.com/forums/post/3077.aspx 

Its a common request but something that was avoided in the early days of Phrogram/KPL for 2 reasons.

1. We are trying to simplify things. In the C#/VB scenario you start by editing a form and hooking up the events etc. The zero to 'hello world' becomes a much bigger jump.

2. Events are essential to UI applications - polling becomes very impractical one you have more than a few controls. For similar reasons we have (so far) avoided event driven apps.

As the Phrogram userbase becomes more advanced and starts asking for these things we need to keep the balance of easy for beginners and useful for non beginners which is hard without just becoming VB or C#.

 

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