DropTools Palette

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kray
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DropTools Palette

Post by kray » Sun Jun 05, 2011 8:11 am

Hey everyone! At the RunRevLive 2011 conference I gave a talk on custom controls and demonstrated an easy to use method of adding custom controls to your stacks. It received a lot of great feedback, and so I've worked on it over the last five weeks and now have a really great LiveCode add-on called "DropTools Palette".

The DropTools Palette makes using custom controls a dream - you just drop a "DropTool" stack into a folder and then from the palette you just drag and drop the control onto your stack - any behavior buttons, resources, images, and code is automatically installed without you having to do anything! The DropTools Palette also supports custom controls that use a library by automatically installing and putting into use the library that it needs to operate.

Developing a DropTool is really easy - in fact if you have a pre-scripted control you'd like to turn into a DropTool, it can be as easy as dropping it onto a stack, setting a couple of properties and then saving the stack in the right folder!

DropTool developers can even add a custom property inspector for their DropTool to help the user configure it, or provide an About Box for info or online documentation!

The DropTools web site not only is a place to download the palette, but also to acquire new DropTool stacks as they are created. The web site is also a place to go to find out about *any* custom controls that have been made available to the LiveCode community, whether they be in DropTool format or not. (I'll be keeping up with announcements and updating the site accordingly.)

The DropTools Palette comes with two custom controls you can use to get started - a PromptField and the stsImageWell control, but there are more at the DropTools site, and I will make announcements when more DropTools have been made available.

For more info and to download the DropTools Palette, go to:

http://droptools.sonsothunder.com/index.irev

Enjoy!


Ken
Ken Ray
Sons of Thunder Software
Email: kray@sonsothunder.com
Web site: http://www.sonsothunder.com

kray
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Re: DropTools Palette

Post by kray » Sun Jun 05, 2011 3:22 pm

My apologies, but I just noticed a minor bug - if you open the Inspector for either the stsImageWell or srCalendar DropTools and you're on Windows or Linux, the Inspector palette did not show a close box, so you couldn't close the Inspector other than by script.

This doesn't affect the DropTools Palette itself, it *does* affect the DropTool Template stack that's included with the main download.

So if you have already downloaded the DropTools Palette, you should re-download it here:

http://droptools.sonsothunder.com/produ ... alette.zip

And if you downloaded Sarah Reichelt's srCalendar DropTool, you should re-download it:

http://droptools.sonsothunder.com/produ ... sr-cal.zip

Sorry for the hiccup...
Ken Ray
Sons of Thunder Software
Email: kray@sonsothunder.com
Web site: http://www.sonsothunder.com

wilstrand
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Re: DropTools Palette

Post by wilstrand » Sun Jun 05, 2011 3:53 pm

Hi Ken!

I think this is a very good idea and initiative! I will play with your DropTools Palette now! :D I´ll get back with my thoughts and how my product rTree will fit into this. So far from what I´ve seen of the docs this looks really good!

With my best regards,
Mats
http:www.tapirsoft.on-rev.com
Open Source LiveCode Plugins - rIDE, rGrid, rTree
LiveCode projects

kray
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Re: DropTools Palette

Post by kray » Sun Jun 05, 2011 3:58 pm

wilstrand wrote:I think this is a very good idea and initiative! I will play with your DropTools Palette now! :D I´ll get back with my thoughts and how my product rTree will fit into this. So far from what I´ve seen of the docs this looks really good!
Thanks! If you have any questions, feel free to post them here or email me directly. In the meantime, I'll add rTree to the "Other Controls" page on the DropTools site (sorry about that, I totally forgot to add RunRev "products" to the list)...
Ken Ray
Sons of Thunder Software
Email: kray@sonsothunder.com
Web site: http://www.sonsothunder.com

kray
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DropTools Palette 1.1 Update

Post by kray » Sun Jul 17, 2011 8:10 am

Just a quick note to let you know that there's an update to the DropTools Palette that has the following changes/additions:
  • Optimized the loading/display of DropTools by not reloading images on every launch
  • Optimized the storing of the DropTools palette location (removes sluggish response when initially dragging the palette)
  • Added API calls for "DropTools_VersionCheck" (which lets your DropTool check to see if the user has a late enough version of the DropTools Palette) and "DropTools_TruncID()" (which returns a truncated object identifier) - see http://droptools.sonsothunder.com/devel ... ckref.irev for more info on these API calls
  • Will automatically disable DropTool icons in the DropTools Palette if "DropTools_VersionCheck" is executed and the DropTools Palette is older than the version provided.
  • Folders in the "DropTools" folder that start with "(" will be ignored (so they can be used as support for specific DropTools).
To update, click on the gear icon in the DropTools Palette, click on the About DropTools tab and then click "Check For Update". If you haven't downloaded the DropTools Palette yet, you can get download it from http://droptools.sonsothunder.com.
Ken Ray
Sons of Thunder Software
Email: kray@sonsothunder.com
Web site: http://www.sonsothunder.com

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Re: DropTools Palette

Post by kray » Sun Jul 17, 2011 6:55 pm

Sorry for the double-post, but I discovered that although the full download was updated to 1.1, the "check for updates" one wasn't...

So to anyone who ran the update before you read this post: if you check the "About DropTools Palette" and it doesn't say "1.1", please do another "Check for Updates" and you should get the new one.

Sorry about the mix up,
Ken Ray
Sons of Thunder Software
Email: kray@sonsothunder.com
Web site: http://www.sonsothunder.com

dglass
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Re: DropTools Palette

Post by dglass » Sun Jul 17, 2011 8:04 pm

FYI, the 'see what's new' button takes one to the following URL:

http://droptools.sonsothunder.com/dtvershist.irev

Which doesn't show the version history.

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