Rohit, Thanks. Gerry

Hi Gerald,

You were close.

Manipulate[
 Grid[
  {{Style["a = " <> ToString@a, 20]},
   {ContourPlot3D[x^2 + y^2 + a z^3 == 1, {x, -2, 2}, {y, -2, 2}, {z, -2, 2}, 
     Mesh -> None, 
     ImageSize -> Medium]}
   }],
 {{a, -2, Style["a", 16]}, -2, 2}]

Also increased the size of the label for the control.

John again,

No need to answer. On viewing the last session recording I learned callKernel is a dummy variable.

Thanks for the very useful / helpful course materials.

TimeConstrained seems not to work when implemented in the Button functionality.

• Correctly understood?
• Is there a work around?

Thank you in advance and best regards Pål L

Thank you so much, Vincent!

Yes, for me it was a very strong course as well.Thanks to all people who made this experience possible!

Hi, there, you can try go to preference dialog, at the security tab, under notebook security, edit trusted directories, put your cdf under one of these trusted directories, then open the cdf files again, the enable dynamic will disappear. this is the simplest way to do it as a Mathematica user,

here are the two technical links on this topic: stackexchange newsgrouparchive

I took a screenshot of each my quiz test at the final parts, I passed three this Friday. This course is fantastic on making new experience for the user. A lot of coverage, I will review the relevant materials once I have spare times.

Thanks.

Was a recording made of today's (Fri, 24 Sep) presentation?

Hi Doug, All the sessions from the series have been publish for review. You can go to the series landing page and choose which you'd like to review. You'll be taken to the session page and can hit the play button to begin watching. Please let us know if you have further questions.

The following code has two problems. extra frame lines inside the SetterBar display are generated and the Dynamic[inputs] appears as a variable name in the blue bar rather than as the value. What is wrong and what are the fixes?

ClearAll["Global`*"]; 
framed[x_] := 
 Framed[x, Alignment -> Center, Background -> GrayLevel[0.96], 
  ImageSize -> {75, 25}, FrameStyle -> None, 
  FrameMargins -> Automatic, BaseStyle -> Bold, 
  FrameStyle -> Directive[None]];
DynamicModule[{input},
 Column[{
   Framed[Dynamic[input], Alignment -> Center, 
    Background -> LightBlue, ImageSize -> {345, 35}, 
    FrameStyle -> None, FrameMargins -> None, BaseStyle -> Bold],
   SetterBar[Dyanmic[input],
    framed[#] & /@ {"(", ")", "X", "AC",
      7, 8, 9, "/",
      4, 5, 6, "*",
      1, 2, 3, "-",
      0, ".", "=", "+"},
    Appearance -> "Horizontal" -> {5, 4} , Background -> White
    ]
   },
  Frame -> True, BaseStyle -> BackGround -> White]
 ]

Hi Gerald,

I see a couple of typos. Dyanmic[input] should be Dynamic[input], and BaseStyle -> BackGround -> White should be BaseStyle -> Background -> White

I experiment with PaneSelector command with a toy example which works as expected: i.e.

DynamicModule[
 {x = 1},
 Column[{
   SetterBar[Dynamic[x], {"Don't press this", 1, 2, 100, "Hi there"}],
   PaneSelector[{"Don't press this" -> "I said DONT PRESS !!!", 
     1 -> "One", 2 -> "Two", 100 -> "You Pressed One Hundred", 
     "Hi there" -> "What is your name ?"}, Dynamic[x]]
   }]

However when I wrap the Speak function around the text to hear the message it is played directly once and is not executed when pressing the tab.

DynamicModule[
 {x = 1},
 Column[{
   SetterBar[Dynamic[x], {"Don't press this", 1, 2, 100, "Hi there"}],
   PaneSelector[{"Don't press this" -> Speak["I said DONT PRESS !!!"],
      1 -> "One", 2 -> "Two", 100 -> "You Pressed One Hundred", 
     "Hi there" -> "What is your name ?"}, Dynamic[x]]
   }]
 ]
 ]

What is going on here ?

Thank you for your comment. So there is no chance to play the sound each time I select the setter bar and not at the begining.

Question: Today you pointed out that ImageSize -> Automatic helps speed up slow interfaces. Could you please explain why?

Thank you everyone for your continued and enthusiastic participation in this week's sessions.

Now that we have covered the fundamental concepts of UI development and looked at various UI examples, in the next week we will focus on best practices and various general tips and tricks.

We will start with various deployment practices, then move on to a host of tips & tricks for speeding up interfaces, making our interfaces aesthetically pleasing, improving the user experience, and more.

Looking forward to your active participation in the next week!

We appreciate all the feedback that you have been giving (either positive or negative). These encourage us to continue to serve our user community, and do it even better in the future!!!

I would like to develop UI's that clients can use with Wolfram Player. From the class yesterday it seems that DynamicModule could be used in this way. Is this correct?

ETA: I would like to keep my functions proprietary, i.e. the client would not be able to see the code.

Hi Pål,

Something like this?

{x = c; PopupMenu[Dynamic[x], {a, b, c, d}], Dynamic[x]}

Jayanta where can we find that utility you use to close the output windows?

I am trying, without much success, to set a local DynamicModule Variable (x) when a global variable (y) is changed :

y = 1 ;

DynamicModule[{x},
 Dynamic[y; Print["called"]; x=100, TrackedSymbols :> {y}]; 
 Dynamic@x,
 Initialization :> (x = 3*y)]

Where am I going wrong?

I am trying to create UI with muted tones. The blue backgrounds for menu items in PopupMenu, SetterBar, RadioButton, etc., are much too strong. The Background option sets the background for the whole control, not the background for the labels, as I want.

I tried Jayanta's suggestion above using ControlsRendering->"Generic", but, at least for SetterBar on a Mac, it produces a control where you can't even tell what's selected. The Background option does successfully change the text label background, but the control itself is not usable.

How can I manage the background color on the menu labels?

Is it permissible to Overlay a control onto a graphic?

For the "Car Game" I created a background image as a graphic object and the "start"/"Stop" controller

background = Graphic[...] control = ... which toggles as in the car game demo,

But the control can't be used when these are packaged together using

Overlay[{
  background,
  control
  }, Alignment -> {Center, Bottom}]

Thanks.

Thank-you, I saw that example but it wasn't immediately apparent how it works. One remaining question .. Does this mean that only one of the overlays can contain controls ?

Where should I put the Dynamic to control the appearence or not of the frame in this toy manipulate example:

Manipulate[
 x,
 {x, 0, 1},
 {{frmd, False}, {True, False}},
 Paneled -> frmd
 ]

Jayanta, thank you very much for the instructive reply.

Hi Charles,

I think what you are looking for is an undocumented function MakeBilateral from the AuthorTools package. Check this thread on MSE.

One of the comments in that thread

MakeBilateral is to make documents or parts of documents like the style of Wolfram's old printed "The Mathematica Book", with explanatory text alongside Input/Output cell pairs

Jayanta, Rohit, Many thanks for your help.

Jorge O

Dear Friends, how can I obtain the same type of sliders and light gray color in the final graphic if I'm using the same code? Do I need to change some initial setting?

Many thanks.

Attachments:

Sliders.png

Thank you for your reply. I think in the option inspector should be "somewhere" an option for the default FontSize to be set at 12 globally or for a notebook.

I don't use Windows so I cannot help with the first issue. For the second one the styling can be changed e.g.

Manipulate[x, {x, 1, 3}, 
 LabelStyle -> Directive[Red, FontSize -> 24, FontFamily -> "Verdana"]]

Either the documentation is wrong or the implementation is wrong (a bug).

I understand the actual behavior, now. My initial question had to do with understanding what the documentation meant. The responses I've received have ignored the documentation of the PopupMenu option and only described actual behavior.

The description "display like a popup menu with initial value name" says this looks and acts like a PopupMenu, but it doesn't. In PopupMenu, the first argument, name, does set the initial value for the menu. I don't have to manually make a selection—what I see is what I get. With ActionMenu and the Appearance->"PopupMenu" option, I get a menu that looks exactly like an ordinary PopuMenu, but does not behave the same. It seems that either the documentation author erroneously assumed equivalent behavior, or that equivalent behavior was intended as documented, and the actual behavior is a bug. At this point I would declare it a bug, since if it looks like a PopupMenu it ought to act like one. If Wolfram doesn't consider it a bug, I would call it a design defect, and the ActionMenu documentation should clarify how the PopupMenu option differs from an ordinary PopupMenu.

My pursuit of this might seem nit-picky, but put yourself in my place. You asked what behavior I need. The answer is, "I don't know yet." I'm developing an application for which I want a UI that doesn't require typing expressions into a notebook. I'm so far very pleased with what I'm learning in this study group, but my purpose here is to try to understand the whole tool set that is available to me. When the implementation doesn't behave as described in the documentation, I waste my precious time trying to figure why I can't make it work, and I waste your precious time trying to help me.

Thank you, Jayanta. I appreciate the example. I'm still learning what I can do without customization, but when I'm finally building something, I may also want to customize.

This example still doesn't answer my question, but I now see the problem is that the documentation is wrong (though some will probably argue that it's just highly misleading). The first argument, name is used in exactly the same way in all 4 Appearance options.

Based on the description of the Appearance option setting "PopupMenu"

display like a popup menu with initial value name

executing the following

ActionMenu[ "10!",
  {"4!" :> Print[4!], "7!" :> Print[7!], "10!" :> Print[10!]}, 
  Appearance -> "PopupMenu"]

should show a popup menu labeled 10!, such that I could click it and the menu choice 10! would be selected. But that's not what happens, the first choice, 4! is selected. This results in a very bad user experience because the menu label matches one of the choices, but the user still has to manually select that choice.

The description implies, and I would expect, that the choice 10! should be preselected when the menu is clicked.

Is it safe to try the quiz now? Is it grading correctly?

[Cmd]+[.] unfortunately can't always abort a given computation instantly. The abortion request goes to the kernel instantly, but depending on the type of computation the kernel is busy with it may check the queue of requests frequently or infrequently. Besides, the abortion itself may take some time.

That said I did not encounter any such problems with Exercise 3. If we are using preemptive evaluation, we should get an $Aborted in 6 secs. With queued evaluation I get back the image in about 10 seconds (this time will depend on your internet connection).

You may want to check:

Options[EvaluationNotebook[], DynamicEvaluationTimeout]

If the value is not 6, I would recommend resetting it to 6 unless you are using it specifically for some purpose.

You can also try quitting the kernel: Evaluation -> Quit Kernel

Thank you everyone for your enthusiastic participation in this week's sessions. I hope that you have been enjoying and finding the sessions helpful.

In this week, we covered some fundamental concepts of dynamics and Manipulate.

In the next week, we will discuss more about certain pragmatic concepts related to the development of User Interfaces and look at several User Interface examples.

Our apologies for few things here and there not working properly in the notebooks. We are making the corrections and will make an updated set of notebooks available to you at the end of the series.

Also, according to the Day 1 notebook, Introduction, slide 8, item 2 under Entirely cloud-based interfaces, the answer to question 3 is being graded incorrectly.

Hi Gerrie,

Yes, I agree, grading is messed up on questions 2, 5, 9, 10.

Dynamic[
 If[stop == 0,
  Button[Style["Start", 20], stop = 1, Background -> LightGreen, 
   ImageSize -> {80, 40}],
  Button[Style["Stop", 20], stop = 0, Background -> LightRed, 
   ImageSize -> {80, 40}]]
 ]

Looking for something like this?

Manipulate[
 Graphics[{
   LABColor[lightness, a, b],
   Opacity[opac],
   Disk[]}],
 {lightness, 0, 1}, {{a, 0}, -1, 1},
 {{b, 0}, -1, 1}, {{opac, 1}, 0, 1}]

It's gratifying to see so many people excited to learn about user interface technologies available in the Wolfram Language. Looking forward to the enthusiasm at this upcoming study group!