I can't count how many times I've wanted to move a bunch of items I selected into a new panel (BasicPanel or ScrollPanel).

The situation is that the client adds a bunch of changes and you now realize you should have grouped a bunch of controls into a panel of some sort so you can deal with them in a group to move them around.

If you didn't use responsive layout, cut and paste keeps their original Top and Left parameter and  you have to manually move them around the panel to get back the origianl layout.

So if there were an option to add them to a panel, and retain their original look, that would be incredible.

The only trick I've found is to add them to a Scroll Panel, then at least I can scroll around and drag them back to where I want them.

Erick
EWB Programming Books and Component Library
http://www.erickengelke.com

erickengelke wrote:

> So if there were an option to add them to a panel, and retain their original look, that would be incredible.

Very much agree.

Erick,

<< If you didn't use responsive layout, cut and paste keeps their original Top and Left parameter and  you have to manually move them around the panel to get back the origianl layout. >>

I'm not quite sure I understand the situation.  Do the original controls have any layout properties set, or not ?  If they don't, then they should retain their Top/Left properties during the paste.

I think that you're saying that you *don't* want this behavior, but I'm not sure what the expected behavior should be then - just place them at 0,0 in the new parent ?

Tim Young
Elevate Software
www.elevatesoft.com

Tim Young [Elevate Software] wrote:

Erick,

<< If you didn't use responsive layout, cut and paste keeps their original Top and Left parameter and  you have to manually move them around the panel to get back the origianl layout. >>

>I'm not quite sure I understand the situation.  Do the original controls have any layout properties set, or not ?  If >they don't, then they should retain their Top/Left properties during the paste.

Thanks for bearing with me.

Correct.  I'm thinking of non-responsive layout controls.  Suppose they are at Left:45, Top:100.  If you cut and paste them into a new Container, they are now Left:45 Top100 relative inside the container, so in actual terms they are way down the container - usually beyond the width/height of the new visible container.  

It would be nice if one could insert them into the container and have their absolute position stay identical, so subtracting their container's left and top parameters.  Then we wouldn't have to drag everything back to where it was before.

Or it could prompt you, like excel does when you cut and paste, asking if you want to keep the keep the original layout or or make this into a bounding box with no change to the absolute positioning.

WHen you think about it, if people are pasting into a container and the pasted control will be beyond the Width/Height of the container, they probably want it to keep the original absolute positioning.

I'm finding that when people want to go from a paper based form to an online form, the best solution is often a hybrid of responsive layout bounding boxes that I can move around the screen or hide, filled with absolute positioned controls I can make look like the client wants.  The problem is when I need to move things into a new bounding box and have to drag each control back to where it was absolutely before I put them into the bounding box.

I wish I could say I only needed this once, but the truth is that the idea to move things into bounding boxes happens very often as customer needs change and they say "just insert this on top of...", and usually need this once the form becomes more complicated and the process becomes more awkward.

Frankly, EWB has replaced Delphi for so many of my projects, I'm now recommending people consider it first when they are making anything to be multiplatform or distributed - much easier to make multiplatform than Delphi applications.  And I'm really excited about the many improvements you are make with 3.0.   It's been well worth the wait.

Erick
EWB Programming Books and Component Library
http://www.erickengelke.com

erickengelke wrote:

> Correct.  I'm thinking of non-responsive layout controls.

In my case, I'm thinking responsive too. There are two issues - first, you have to mess up your layout getting the new panel into place. Second, you have to make sure you select the components in the right order.
I'd very much welcome the ability to be able to select a random set of components (with the same parent I guess) and then have a new panel inserted as parent of them, keeping the layout order as it was (as much as possible obviously). It can't do everything to get things right, like perhaps resetting the layout, but it would make things much more productive.

On 4/29/2020 9:47 AM, Matthew Jones wrote:
> erickengelke wrote:
>
>> Correct.  I'm thinking of non-responsive layout controls.
>
> In my case, I'm thinking responsive too. There are two issues - first, you have to mess up your layout getting the new panel into place. Second, you have to make sure you select the components in the right order.
> I'd very much welcome the ability to be able to select a random set of components (with the same parent I guess) and then have a new panel inserted as parent of them, keeping the layout order as it was (as much as possible obviously). It can't do everything to get things right, like perhaps resetting the layout, but it would make things much more productive.

Delphi way of doing the "new parent" would be a good fit - select
controls in the navigator and drag to new part container.

As to the "paste with top/left adjust" - if such a thing is added i'd
prefer it to be separate from regular paste command.

Raul

Raul wrote:

> paste command

I think this is not a paste command at all. It is a "move to new parent panel" command. The current cut and paste can be "dangerous" if you lose your clipboard before you paste, and there is no undo.

Yes, the drag to a new parent would help significantly, but it isn't quite the same.

Erick,

Okay, got it.  I can work something in that handles this better.  It's something that I've run into myself before - kind of like "Who hid my stuff ????", and it is exacerbated when the new parent container does not have scrolling support enabled.

<< Frankly, EWB has replaced Delphi for so many of my projects, I'm now recommending people consider it first when they are making anything to be multiplatform or distributed - much easier to make multiplatform than Delphi applications.  And I'm really excited about the many improvements you are make with 3.0.   It's been well worth the wait. >>

Thanks !  Although, we're not necessarily trying to get people to stop using Delphi.  Delphi is very important when you need to include native functionality in a server application that isn't present in EWB already, and that's quite a bit still.

Tim Young
Elevate Software
www.elevatesoft.com

Tim Young [Elevate Software] wrote:


<< Frankly, EWB has replaced Delphi for so many of my projects, I'm now recommending people consider it first when they are making anything to be multiplatform or distributed - much easier to make multiplatform than Delphi applications.  And I'm really excited about the many improvements you are make with 3.0.   It's been well worth the wait. >>

>Thanks !  Although, we're not necessarily trying to get people to stop using Delphi.  Delphi is very important when you need to include native functionality in a server application that isn't present in EWB already, and that's quite a bit still.

Oh sure Delphi is my primary server deleopment tool except when I'm forced to use PHP.  But I found FMX for Android/iOS/Linux is no longer my "go to" enviroment for cross platform, it's more often EWB now, the development cycle is much faster when you aren't updating toolkits and dealing with multiplatofrm issues.  Youv'e done such a great job of hiding platform differences, kudos to you!

I would say EWB has greatly expanded my view of what can easily be done in JavaScript.  My clients have been really impressed - these apps have become desktop replacements for many of them.  And how often they write to say with surprise "and it worked from my phone too!!!".

The only deficiency I've found of the JavaScript environment (besides speed), is that iOS limits things like scrolling of a DIV.  But that's true of all JavaScript on iOS.  Google goes to great lengths to simulate that scrolling.  I couldn't reasonably expect you to handle that as well as Google does.  I wish iOS would become more standards compliant instead.

Take care,

Erick
EWB Programming Books and Component Library
http://www.erickengelke.com

Erick,

<< The only deficiency I've found of the JavaScript environment (besides speed), is that iOS limits things like scrolling of a DIV.  But that's true of all JavaScript on iOS.  Google goes to great lengths to simulate that scrolling.  I couldn't reasonably expect you to handle that as well as Google does.  I wish iOS would become more standards compliant instead. >>

I think there might be a bug in EWB regarding iOS and scrolling.  I had a report of this a month or so ago, looked into it, but wasn't able to replicate it.  I'll see if I can revisit this and see what's going on.

Tim Young
Elevate Software
www.elevatesoft.com