Unable to name new cards within a stack

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chris25
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Unable to name new cards within a stack

Post by chris25 » Thu Oct 10, 2013 5:38 pm

Having spent almost 1 and half hours on lesson: Objects Exercise, I am at my end. the lesson misses vital information for a complete beginner and have managed to find the first answer dug deep in some help file. But i am really confused now on my last problem, here once again the lesson does not guide you at all. It says to name each card after you have created the stack. I have tried, and I simply can not name each card.

Firstly, naming a card just changes the whole lot to the same name, each card is named exactly the same. Double clicking the card name in the application browser and selecting the inspector gives you only the same box that you had when you named the original stack. Filling in title seems to do Exactly the same thing as filling in the name in the inspector. The tutorials are silent on how you actually name a card. So I am lost. It is simple Logic says you double click the card and access the inspector and give a new name. Please help.

Simon
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Re: Unable to name new cards within a stack

Post by Simon » Thu Oct 10, 2013 6:26 pm

I would really love to do a live presentation on this.
chris25, if you are here now 10:25 am PST I could set one up.

Or we set a time, maybe I'll be available.

Simon
I used to be a newbie but then I learned how to spell teh correctly and now I'm a noob!

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Re: Unable to name new cards within a stack

Post by jacque » Thu Oct 10, 2013 7:51 pm

It sounds like you're renaming the stack rather than the card. If you are using the application browser (rather than the new Project Browser) be sure you have expanded the stack by clicking the small arrow at the left of the stack name. Then you will see all the cards listed. Those are what you inspect in order to rename them.

Does your stack have more than one card?
Jacqueline Landman Gay | jacque at hyperactivesw dot com
HyperActive Software | http://www.hyperactivesw.com

chris25
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Re: Unable to name new cards within a stack

Post by chris25 » Fri Oct 11, 2013 12:04 am

Hallo Simon, I see you are in USA (I think) times are a bit awkward I'm afraid. I appreciate the offer though. I just found out that you navigate the cards with a "double click", I just clicked on them. That tiny piece of hidden information cause me stress for two hours. I also found out that you name the cards by accessing the "Name card: in the drop down menu, I kept clicking on the inspector everytime I clicked once on the card in the browser application trying to work all this out. Jacque obviously that is what I was doing, but as said above, by clicking once on the card in the browser application I kept thinking I was accessing the card when I wasn't at all. Thankyou both for your help. Completely and totally new at this, never coded a single thing in my life. And learning by yourself is three times as difficult as sitting in a classroom and so frustrating at times, I just want to stick my hand up and ask the darn question!

Chris

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Re: Unable to name new cards within a stack

Post by jacque » Fri Oct 11, 2013 12:32 am

Ask here, as much as you want. That's why we hang around.

It can be extremely frustrating at first, there's so much to know, so don't beat yourself up. I wouldn't spend more than a few minutes on a problem before I'd ask here, especially while you're still learning the ropes. There's lots of ropes. Avoiding the frustration will let you stick with it long enough to start enjoying the process.

There's a critical mass of info to learn and it's tough until that happens. Once it does though, you are going to have lots of fun.
Jacqueline Landman Gay | jacque at hyperactivesw dot com
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Simon
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Re: Unable to name new cards within a stack

Post by Simon » Fri Oct 11, 2013 12:32 am

Hey Chris,
The magic of a forum is you are not alone :)
Just keep asking questions.

I guess I should add a note which says "If you have shown due diligent in solving the problem yourself..." but most people due that anyways.

Simon
Edit: Heck yeah ... What Jacque says :)
I used to be a newbie but then I learned how to spell teh correctly and now I'm a noob!

chris25
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Re: Unable to name new cards within a stack

Post by chris25 » Fri Oct 11, 2013 2:05 pm

Hallo, very friendly you guys. It is encouraging to read your comments. I appreciate everything you are saying. I usually spend on average anything up to an hour trying to solve a problem before tearing my head out. The biggest frustration believe it or not, are the help files, they are all over the place and it would be so nice to just click on a little question mark in any drop down menu in livecode and be told where to read further. This is the biggest headache after two weeks.

For example, I am importing my own images, I know their exact size in pixel dimensions and number of pixels etc. So I access the image properties inspector and lo and behold a couple of them appear to be showing different sizes, I am talking 400 Kb and almost a complete megabyte for example. So I want to check that what that figure is half way down the properties box is indeed representing the size of the image in Livecode. So I search everywhere for "image properties inspector" and turn up nothing anywhere, even in the beginners guide I try to locate it. Now obviously it is there somewhere. But Agh, where are you? Just a little question mark in that drop down menu that when you click says: " beginners guide section 15 page 5" and advanced tutorial chapter 45 page 19" - for example.

I look forward one day to being able to contribute - give six months - I hope.


Just encountered another problem, yes I spent over 20 minutes here:

Instructions from livecode university say this:

1. Create a transparent button. (Use the Style popup in the Basic panel of the property inspector.) Give the button a name and label.

Looks so simple does'nt it? I accessed every darn "inspector", obviously the image inspector was the first. I scrolled through every darn thing from the basics to all settings. Can I find this "Style pop up"? Obviously not. The ambiguous term "Basic panel" seems to be the key word here, but this does not tell me what it is otherwise I would have found it by now.

15 minutes later: There is NO style pop up in the basic panel of the property inspector. Beats me. Quitting and going shopping for a sponge brick!


FOUND IT. Unbelievable, you first create the button, then double click and hey presto. I was clicking all over the place, but had not created a button, I thought you had to find an inspector to create the button....Mmm Yep, the sponge brick worked!

Okay, Now I'm going to give this ambiguity a complete miss: (working with images and buttons)

1. Choose This Stack from the popup list at the top. This shows all the images you previously imported. Choose one. Note that any imported image can also be used as a button icon.

I have the application browser window open and I can see what is there, but this little instruction: what is this stack, does he mean "this stack" or "choose this particular stack? is "this stack" a new drop down menu? and what pop up list? where is there a pop up list? and at the top of what? I have 5 windows open, top of the menu? top of the list? top of the inspector panel?

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Re: Unable to name new cards within a stack

Post by Simon » Fri Oct 11, 2013 6:03 pm

Hi Chris,
Could you tell me the lesson number you are working on?
That will help me find what you are talking about, and give a better answer.

Simon
I used to be a newbie but then I learned how to spell teh correctly and now I'm a noob!

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Re: Unable to name new cards within a stack

Post by jacque » Fri Oct 11, 2013 6:41 pm

Since you're talking about icons, it's likely the lesson is referring to the icon chooser. That's also the only utility that has a "this stack" menu option other than the script editor "find" dialog.

You can access the icon chooser by double-clicking a button to see its inspector, going to the "icons and border" pane, and clicking the little chooser wand image next to the icon field. The rest of the instructions should make more sense once you're there.

Remember that the property inspector is relevant only to the currently selected object, so you must select an object with the edit tool before you view the inspector. Although technically it isn't true, you can think of each object as having its own property inspector; you need to select the object whose properties you want to see.
Jacqueline Landman Gay | jacque at hyperactivesw dot com
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Re: Unable to name new cards within a stack

Post by jacque » Fri Oct 11, 2013 6:45 pm

chris25 wrote:1. Create a transparent button. (Use the Style popup in the Basic panel of the property inspector.) Give the button a name and label.
This means that you should create a regular standard button and change its style to "transparent" using the button's property inspector. Using the tips above, you would:

Drag a standard button to the card
Double-click it with the edit tool to see its property inspector
In the Basic pane, use the Style popup to change it to a transparent button style
Jacqueline Landman Gay | jacque at hyperactivesw dot com
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chris25
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Re: Unable to name new cards within a stack

Post by chris25 » Fri Oct 11, 2013 7:28 pm

Hallo all, thankyou for your input. This is the bit I skipped, along with number 13!

Lesson 8: Exploring img objects, page 2 (of 4). Point numbers 7 and 13. Number 7 eludes me, number 13 makes no sense since I have only one button and when I assigned all the icons I only ever saw two changes, having said that there is no left facing arrow since I was instructed to create a normal button, the only arrows I have were downloaded and hidden per instructions.

Thing is, I am actually finding these tutorials more of a hinderance than a help. They leave you dangling in parts, some of it mis directed, and overall impossible to find answers in help files and pdf's which turn up nothing in the search parameters or when they do you are looking at very advanced answers. I am spending so much time looking to know where to find the answer before I even find a place where the answer might be, and only a fraction of the time doing any practical. So i might skip this whole university thing and just sit down and plough through the books on line.

I have learned everything in life through visual, videos and watching, this reading business is so un-intuitive and time consuming and is not coducive to effective development of new concepts at all. I found a great course but at 450 euros, toooo expensive, I found some videos for 50 dollars, but they are no way intended for a beginner, most of the stuff is for business people it seems.

Before I decided on livecode I was opting for unity 3D, not because it is better, but simply because there are huge video resources and professional videos with Lynda_com. I learned with them for 3 years and speeded ahead, but my first week here is already putting me off, ONLY because there is no visual learning strategy, not even on you tube, and that really surprised me, especially when you look at the myriad of videos that exist with other vendors. Live code excites me, and I think it is good, very good, but the lack of proper guidance is what I getting me down, I can not read read read, and that is before I even know where to look since many of the search commands do not really work.

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Re: Unable to name new cards within a stack

Post by Simon » Fri Oct 11, 2013 8:39 pm

Hi Chris,
Don't despair :)
People say here that it takes 100 hours of using liveCode before "the penny drops" and it all comes together and becomes great fun! Yes, Great Fun!

LCU is not exactly new but it's new to the liveCode offerings. I think it's a good start and a good reference for beginners but I have to say that the particular question you asked about "This Stack" did confuse me. I have never (maybe once) used the "magic wand" to assign an icon, I just click on an image and copy it's ID from the inspector and paste it into the icon field of the button. Yeah, I don't like the image chooser because it may only show a portion of the image.

Try taking a look at the "User Samples" (in the title bar of liveCode), in there there are plenty of projects to take apart. errr... I just looked at a Calculator example and it's not for new users :? But still something to look at.

Make sure you know about "breakpoints" so that you can step through the code line by line. There are 2 forms of breakpoint one is typing the word "breakpoint" in to the code:

Code: Select all

on mouseUp
breakpoint
put "This is changing a variable" into tVar --scroll down in the varible watcher at the bottom of the script editor to see tVar changing
beep
put space & "to something new." after tVar
end mouseUp
and the other is clicking on the line number in the script editor so a red dot shows up. I have left out how to actually step through but I hope you can look at the script editor and figure out which buttons to push.

There are the lessons:
http://lessons.runrev.com/s/lessons

Maybe just think up a project for yourself and do it. Keep it simple and keep the Dictionary handy.

The dictionary is great because you can just take a guess at the name of the function you want. I have given this example before about a "news ticker tape" scrolling across the screen how do you make it work? Take a guess, type scroll into the dictionary... hmm... go left?... maybe move :) In the end your code might not be the most efficient but does it solve the current problem?

Ok I'm rambling now.

7. What Jacque said above
13. In the button inspector> icons & border you will see that there a 6 states a button can be in, each can have a different icon (image) associated with it though you don't have to use them all.

Simon
I used to be a newbie but then I learned how to spell teh correctly and now I'm a noob!

chris25
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Re: Unable to name new cards within a stack

Post by chris25 » Fri Oct 11, 2013 9:27 pm

Simon, I appreciate your reply. Though I am totally lost on this, sorry:

=====================
Make sure you know about "breakpoints" so that you can step through the code line by line. There are 2 forms of breakpoint one is typing the word "breakpoint" in to the code:
CODE: SELECT ALL
on mouseUp
breakpoint
put "This is changing a variable" into tVar --scroll down in the varible watcher at the bottom of the script editor to see tVar changing
beep
put space & "to something new." after tVar
end mouseUp

and the other is clicking on the line number in the script editor so a red dot shows up. I have left out how to actually step through but I hope you can look at the script editor and figure out which buttons to push.
======================

I don't have any concept here of what you are referring to, except that mouseup is something to do with the mouse cursor rolling over something? I think I will give the LCU a miss, it's infuriating, I will try another approach, as you said, think up a simple idea for an application on the desktop, and then start figuring out where on earth to begin. The trouble with learning any new skill is that if you know that something must happen and you don't know how it works, then you are half way to a solution. For example, I do not know how an engine works, but I know the principles so if I know there needs to be a gear to turn a crank shaft I simply learn how the gear works. But with Livecode I have no concepts or understanding of how things work so I can not even know what correct question to ask in order to find out how something is put together. That is the Biggest hurdle. For example you mentioned copying and pasting the id number instead of using the wand, that is brilliant, but I would never have worked that out for myself, your idea straight away is so efficient and more sensible.

Regards
Chris

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Re: Unable to name new cards within a stack

Post by Simon » Fri Oct 11, 2013 9:42 pm

Hi Chris,
I get what you are saying, no idea where to start.

Ok so start a new stack and drag a button onto it.
Edit the script of the button (right click the button) and place the "on mouseUp" code above into the script.
Now press the button.

Because liveCode is English-like you should be able to understand that "on mouseUp' is the code to do something after the mouse button has been pressed down and then released (or up). Yeah, the complete form would be "on mouseButton1Up" but do you really need that much? LiveCode is full of these truncated commands "on openCard", "on closeStack" etc. you will get used to them.

Give the above code a try to see the next bit by watching a variable.

Simon
I used to be a newbie but then I learned how to spell teh correctly and now I'm a noob!

chris25
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Re: Unable to name new cards within a stack

Post by chris25 » Fri Oct 11, 2013 11:34 pm

Ok, this is where things get absurd, (from my point of view), I did exactly what you said, then pasted the code, applied, no problems. Clicked on the button, nothing happens.

"Give the above code a try to see the next bit by watching a variable." I understand this to mean that by pressing the button, I should see the next variable. I simply do not follow what it is I am supposed to be understanding? Call me thick and stupid, (I heard that), but this obviously very very utterly simple exercise is more baffling than reading the L*A*B report from my monitor profiling spectrometer.

Sorry. In the meantime I am searching somewhere? to learn what a breakpoint is....

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