Types of windows in Lycia: bordered, flat, dialog, full-screen

In this documentation, we refer to 4 types of windows that can be opened by 4gl applications developed with Lycia - flat, bordered, dialog, and full-screen.

Bordered window is a window that can have and has a menubar, toolbar, and status bar. Can be both parent and child.

Flat window is a child window which can have a menubar, toolbar, and status bar but its menubar, toolbar, or status bar is displayed to its parent.

Dialog window is a bordered window that can be moved within your application.

Full-screen window is a flat or bordered window opened in a full-screen mode. Full-screen windows occupy the whole screen of a computer and covers up everything in the background.

Bordered windows

Bordered window is a window that can have and has a menubar, toolbar, and status bar.

Here is a basic diagram of a bordered window:

In a very simple form this diagram looks like this:

On the client-side, bordered windows are converted into the class, qx-dialog, with its children and descendants.

Form area is a part of the dialog window where your .fm2 forms are displayed.

On the client-side, the content of this form area is converted into classes, qx-pane and qx-content.

By default, the size of the form area is 600x400 px - the default size of a root container in a .fm2 form. Otherwise, form area has the size specified for the root container.

 

Full-screen windows

Full-screen windows occupy the whole screen of a PC, laptop, tablet, or smartphone and covers up everything in the background.

You can open any window in full-screen mode - regardless of whether it is flat, bordered, or dialog.

On the client-side, full-screen windows are converted into the class, qx-window-border, with its children and descendants.

When you open a window full-screen, it occupies all the available space and completely ignores the preferred size of the root container.

This available space is determined by the size of the browser window.

Currently, LyciaStudio has a pre-defined window size - 1280x1000 px - that was set-up to make it easier for 4gl developers to design their .fm2 forms in the full-screen mode.

When you add widgets and containers to your .fm2 forms, the size of these widgets and container when opened full screen depends on the specified horizontal/vertical alignment:

• if horizontal/vertical alignment is set to Stretch, this container or widget will occupy all the available space (= space left by other containers/widgets);
• if horizontal/vertical alignment is set to Left/Center/Right or Top/Center/Bottom correspondingly, this container or widget will have the size specified by preferredSize;
• if horizontal/vertical alignment is set to Default, the size of this container or widget will depend on what horizontal/vertical alignment is the default one. For example, for buttons default alignment is left top, for canvases - stretch stretch, and for calendars - stretch top.

Compare a simple form opened in a bordered window full-screen (the 1st image) and not full-screen (the 2nd image):

How to open bordered windows in the full screen mode, you can read here and here.