Question on Photoshop-Panel-Style Layout

OzMachine

Hey Josh,

I'm trying to think of a good way to structure a screen that would look like the main interface of Photoshop--just the basic idea of a panels (of varying widths) on the left or right, and a center area for content. This center area would not fall behind the side panels, it would need to be a panel itself taking up the remainder of the space. I was looking at AnchorLayouts in Haxe, but wanted your opinion on the matter. Maybe a HorizontalLayout?

Thanks!

OzMachine

Well, I think I figured it out...

mThisLayout.horizontalAlign = HorizontalAlign.JUSTIFY;
this.layout = mThisLayout;

mPreviewPanel.layoutData = new HorizontalLayoutData(100, 100);
mPreviewPanel.backgroundSkin = new Bitmap(new BitmapData(100, 100, false, 0xFF0000));
addChild(mPreviewPanel);

mLeftPanel.width = 200;
mLeftPanel.layoutData = new HorizontalLayoutData(null, 100);
mLeftPanel.backgroundSkin = new Bitmap(new BitmapData(100, 100, false, 0x00FF00));
addChild(mLeftPanel);

joshtynjala

Yeah, using HorizontalLayout with percentWidth set to 100.0 for the middle container seems reasonable to me.

If I update AnchorLayout to support anchoring to the edges of other children in the parent container, that could be an option too. However, the code to support that feature is actually pretty complex, and performance would be worse, so I think that HorizontalLayout is the better choice here.

mThisLayout.horizontalAlign = HorizontalAlign.JUSTIFY

It's worth mentioning that HorizontalAlign.JUSTIFY is not supported by HorizontalLayout. It doesn't hurt to keep it there, but it just behaves like LEFT.

OzMachine

Ah, I see about the horizontalAlign property. Yes, I have used and enjoyed the anchored edges in the as3 version. But hey, this works!