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Creating and Programming Hotspots with Xbasic

Description

Many of the forms in the AlphaSports application have a set of images in the lower right corner. At first, you might think these were buttons with image labels. In fact, they are actually composed of two layered images and a set of Hotspots. A hotspot is similar to a button without a visible component. It is a rectangular region that responds to an OnPush event and will run either an Action Script or Xbasic code.

Procedure: Creating and Programming a Hotspot with Xbasic

The following procedure assumes that the developer has opened the form in the Form Editor . Follow these instructions to format a hotspot similar to hotspot4 .

  1. Sketch the hotspot on the form.

  2. When the Define Hotspot dialog box appears, click the Use Xbasic Editor option button.

  3. Click OK.

    images/UG_Define_Hotspot_dialog.gif

  4. Paste the following Xbasic code into the Code Editor. 

    dim op as P

op = obj("help")
if (is_object(op)) then
    op.activate()
else
    form.view("help")
end if

  5. Click Close(X) .

  6. Click Save All and OK.

An Explanation of the Xbasic Code

The first statement creates a pointer variable named op to refer to the Help form. 

dim op as P

The next statement uses the obj() function to get a pointer to the Help form, if it exists. 

op = obj("help")

If the pointer to the Help form exists, the Help form is open, and the is_object() function returns true. If it does not exist, the function returns false. The true alternative uses the activate() function to display the already open Help form. 

if (is_object(op))
    op.activate()

The false alternative uses the form.view() method to open and display the Help form. 

else
    form.view("help")
end if

See Also