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Review
DW Toolbar
Issue: 4.4 (March/April 2006)
Author: Greg Fiumara
Article Description: No description available.
Article Length (in bytes): 3,917
Starting Page Number: 8
RBD Number: 4402
Resource File(s): None
Related Link(s): None
Known Limitations: None
Full text of article...
The graphical user interface is all about accessing and processing information quickly. Within any program, graphics, or some other user interface element must be present in order to allow the user to proceed with tasks. Over the years, there have been several trends of popular elements, spanning from palette windows, to contextual menus, and now to NSToolbars. Even the REALbasic IDE uses a toolbar! Although REALbasic provides out-of-the-box support for such toolbars, their capability range is quite limited. It is with such devotion to the toolbar element that DarkWorks has released DW Toolbar to the RB community.
The first thing anyone will notice about this implementation of the Cocoa-esque toolbar is that a popup menu and an editfield are included in DarkWorks' example project. In fact, any kind of control can be embedded into the toolbar, providing for some very interesting and innovative tools. The more support the better, and REALbasic currently does not provide this type of support without subclassing as DarkWorks has done.
It is very easy for the user of a DW Toolbar-using application to resize or customize the toolbar from the developer suggested default setup. The developer has built in contextual menu support for changing icon and text size. Command-dragging rearranges toolbar elements from the running environment. Alas, DW Toolbar behaves -- for the most part -- just like a standard NSToolbar from a Cocoa development environment.
Although it is hard to argue or beg for more features in a free software item like DW Toolbar, some improvements may enhance its functionality. An example would be with menus within toolbar items, similar to a menu stemming from a "forward" or "back" button in a web browser. NSToolbars display the menu from a fixed position, near the triangle of the button. DW Toolbar uses a contextual menu to display the menu, and therefore the options list appears at the exact X, Y coordinate of the mouse pointer. Although this may be more convenient for the user, it is not expected behavior. Additionally, collapsing or expanding the toolbar is very cumbersome and awkward. It consists of resizing the window and then having the toolbar elements "disappear."
Another aspect many may dislike about this toolbar is that it adds around 300 kB to the compiled application, whereas REALbasic's built-in toolbar hardly adds to file size at all. Although 300 kB is nothing in today's world of broadband Internet and DVD storage, it is still a price to pay, and a burden on users who may not keep their technology up-to-date. There is little DarkWorks or anyone can do to correct this problem, except pressure REALsoftware for better toolbar support.
Nothing in this world is perfect, though many things come close. DW Toolbar from DarkWorks is one of those items that comes close. Inline comments assure developers that work on this control will continue in the future.
IN BRIEF Product DW Toolbar 1.0.1 Manufacturer DarkWorks/Stefano Azzolini Price Free Contact Info http://www.darkworks.it/ Pros Drag reorder and resizing built in Support for any interface element in toolbar
Cons Bad expand/collapse of toolbar Unexpected behavior from toolbar menus
Rating (1.0-5.0): 4.8
End of article.
Article copyrighted by REALbasic Developer magazine. All rights reserved.
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