Drop-down boxes without dialog?

[TBacker]

Is there any way to create an on-screen (not pop-up) drop-down box?

I want to be able to select music selections and genres WITHOUT opening the whole search dialog, and want it skinned. The idea is to allow users to easily select pre-made selections and genre filtering from within the main GUI without having to access standard menus.

I though about even simulating this with a button object and a box with a list in it, but I don't see a way to make a box appear and disappear with scripting.

Thanks in advance for any help you can come up with!

[SilverEagle]

Have a look at for instance . Frenchi has done something similar in his skins, look around for more examples in the skins+more division.

The only way (besides a huge DLL and lots of hacking) to have a box is by creating layouts A & B which are identical except the second one has a 'dropdown box'. Then you put a 'open' button on the A, and a 'close' button on B.

Now when your 'open' action is 'switch to layout B' and your 'close' action is 'switch to layout A' it all looks like a box opening.

SilverEagle

[TBacker]

Thanks SilverEagle - I already have started down that very road. My first experience with using the layout workaround was to create an autoplay button that changed it's state with the actual autoplay state.

I'm working on layouts for a genre / selection drop-down as well as a kind of pop-up A-Z letter selection dialog. Really the only way to make a touch-screen capable skin with limited screen real estate is to have things pop-up and buttons change purpose depending on conditions.

It just fells like a bit of a hack to change layouts soo much.

[SilverEagle]

TBacker wrote:
> Really the only way to make a touch-screen capable skin with limited screen real estate is to have things pop-up and buttons change purpose depending on conditions.

And totally limit the possible actions! (see my BlueTouch skins ).

> It just fells like a bit of a hack to change layouts soo much.

It is, and you'd better see the fun of working within SJ's limitations or it gets frustrating soon. But a word of warning: there is a limit to the number of layouts a skin can have. I forgot if it is hardcoded or if it just gets buggy after that, out of my head it is something around 50 (search the forum to be sure). No problem if you just have a base layout and a few special modes, but if you have parts of the layout which you can toggle on/off so to speak, you end up with a matrix of all possibilities very fast approaching the limits.

Have fun!
SilverEagle