Answers to your Alpha Five Questions
| Hey Doc, I have been a user of the the DOS versions of Alpha4. I use the blinking
field to call attention to a field for one reason or another. Ralph |
Ralph,
There is no blinking font attribute in Alpha Five, but you can use the form's OnTimer event to create a blinking field. Here is an example:
Figure 1. Blinking field in Alpha Five
To create the blinking field, first we need to set a Timer interval for the form. We do this through the form's Properties tab:
Figure 2. Adjust the Timer interval to 0.75 seconds in the Form designer's Properties.
I have found that values between 0.5 and 1.0 seconds make for the least distracting blinking rate. You can experiment - the figure you are viewing on this web site has a blink rate of 0.75 seconds, which to my eye is fast enough to get attention without being annoying.
Next, we set an OnTimer event for the form. The field that is blinking on this form is named INVOICE_NUMBER_LBL. The OnTimer event for the form will fire once every Timer interval, or in our case, every 0.75 seconds. The OnTimer event is accessed through Form, Actions in form designer mode:
Figure 3. The OnTimer event script.
The OnTimer event script is a simple one-liner that changes
the visible property of the label from .t. to .f.:
invoice_number_lbl.object.visible= .not. invoice_number_lbl.object.visible
Whatever you do, use blinking fields sparingly. They can be very
annoying to your end users!
Dr. Wayne
| Have a question about Alpha Five? Send it to DrPWayne@juno.com. Do not send any zipped up data files, but be as specific as you can about your problem. |
9/12/99