Lingo in a Nutshell

Custom MUI Dialogs

The MUI Xtra can create and control custom dialog boxes (see Figure 15-3) containing buttons, editable fields, labels, sliders, popups, and even bitmaps. (It also creates simple Alert dialogs and File dialogs for saving and opening files or entering URLs, as covered in Chapter 14.)

Figure 15-3. Sample Custom MUI Dialog

MUI custom dialog boxes:

• Can contain buttons with custom labels, unlike Alert() dialogs

• Can contain numerous user interface elements

• Can include horizontal scrolling editable text fields

• Allow clipboard operations for editable text (doesn’t seem to work)

• Can be updated dynamically based on a user’s choices

• Use less memory than a MIAW used to simulate a dialog box

• Have the same platform-specific appearance as native dialog boxes

• Respond to keyboard commands like native dialog boxes

• Can contain very large text strings (more than 255 characters)

Tip

Due to space limitations, this chapter documents only the MUI Xtra’s Alert() method. Refer to the bonus online chapter at http://www.zeusprod.com/nutshell/chapters/muixtra.html for details on creating custom dialog boxes with the MUI Xtra.