Quick Start Tutorial - GUI Design Sample

Overview

As a simple "Task List Manager" example, the Quick Start Tutorial Application provides an introduction to most of the basic building blocks that you can use in your own application designs. It isn't intended to represent a good application or necessarily even a good user interface for such an application.

Things to note

1. Items in menus and toolbars can all be used to open or close other windows and handle other navigation events.
2. Pull-down menus use a type of link (denoted by a square) that makes them disappear when you click outside of them or open up another window. This also supports cascading menus though this sample doesn't have any.
3. All of the windows and dialogs are components created in separate design files and pulled into the main storyboard design.
4. The "Open" dialog is a standard library component that can be used directly (as in this case) or copied and modified.
5. The dialogs are all modal (shown with a solid arrow) which means that they must be closed to gain access to the menus again.
6. The document windows are non-modal (shown with an open arrow) and act like independent windows that may be opened and closed without affecting other windows or access to the menus.
7. An Overlay is used on the "Task List" document window to allow navigation to a dialog on double-clicking and a popup context menu on right-clicking.
8. Placement Anchors are used to position the document windows on the main window when opened and also to specify mouse-relative positioning for the popup context menu.
9. Item deletion in the task list is achieved by replacing the original document window with one that excludes the selected item being deleted. This is an extension to the original tutorial design.
10. The links to "Close" boxes on the document windows are no longer required in GUI Design Studio version 2 but remain from the tutorial as used in version 1.
11. The "Close and Accept/Cancel" boxes are also not required in version 2 for some of the pre-defined buttons such as "OK" and "Cancel". They can still be useful to document meaning though.