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!

The approach suggested by Mr. Choi is correct.

The standalone version of the built-in LAB color palette can be seen using:

CellPrint[FrontEndResource["LABColorValueSelector"]]

This particular palette works by replacing the selection, and is thus hard to integrate with a Manipulate.

It is possible to emulate the built-in LAB color setter using top level code, but that would require some work.

I am wondering is there a way to vary what type of color setter is presented to the user with the Manipulate function. For example, is it possible to use a LAB Color setter instead of the default color selector in the Manipulate function?

Yes by default the appearances are OS dependent. We can set a generic appearance which should be independent of the OS:

Style[Slider[Dynamic[x]], ControlsRendering -> "Generic"]

Yes DynamicModule is in general supported in the Wolfram Player. Please see the difference between the Free Player and the Player Pro/Enterprise CDF though, for a comparison of all the supported features.

We will discuss encoding of packages, making the functions ReadProtected etc. for securing the code in Session 10 - Deployment. If your interface is small enough, you could deploy the interface and need not keep code in any separate package. Once again, more about deployment practices are coming in Session 10.

On slide 10 of today's presentation, Session 3 - Dynamic Fundamentals I, a correction was made to the following expression:

Control objects:

stop = 1;

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

To make it work as intended, stop==1 and stop==0 were inserted, but I haven't been able to make the correction properly. Could you please help?

Today's quiz is a disaster. My answers to questions 2, 5, 9 and 10 are being ignored. I can change my answers to any of these and my score remains unchanged.

Any idea when the quiz is due? I don't see a due date listed in any of the materials. Thanks.

I have the same issue. In other study groups the due date came after the course was finished.So, it is probably not an issue in this regards.

[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

I am sorry, could someone post the link to the quiz? I can not find it on the group. Thank you and sorry for the added noise!

name is the first argument to ActionMenu. From the example under Options / Appearance

Table[ActionMenu[
  "Factorials", {"4!" :> Print[4!], "7!" :> Print[7!], "10!" :> Print[10!]}, 
  Appearance -> a], {a, {None, Automatic, "PopupMenu", "Button"}}]

The name is just text that is intended to describe whatever is relevant to all the available actions. It is not a default selection. It is up to the programmer to use text that is appropriate and not misleading. A name of "10!" is misleading since that is not the only available action. In the documented example perhaps a better name would be "Select a factorial to compute". Or maybe

Table[ActionMenu[
  Tooltip["Factorials", "Select a factorial to compute"],
  {"4!" :> Print[4!], "7!" :> Print[7!], "10!" :> Print[10!]}, 
  Appearance -> a], {a, {None, Automatic, "PopupMenu", "Button"}}]

This results in a very bad user experience because the menu label matches one of the choices

Right, so don't do that. :-)

Perhaps ActionMenu is not the right control to use for what you are trying to accomplish. Can you describe the behavior of the UI that you need?

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.

Hi Everyone,

Just wanted to confirm Quiz 1 should be working as expected. Our apologies for the issues you faced with the quiz last week.

Also we'd like to request that you not post the link to the quizzes here in the public forum. We've created the quizzes specifically for our study group attendees. But we are happy to discuss any questions you may have about the quizzes, here.

Thank you, Abrita

In few examples from the tutorials in Windows 10 I have a couple of appearence issues: For example in the figure below

The controls are truncated.

In the next simple command the x symbol at the left appears very small.

Both examples are at 100% (zoom) magnification level. Obviously there is a matter of scaling in a laptop screen. All the values at the preferences are in the default values.

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.

Jayanta, Rohit, Many thanks for your help.

Jorge O

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

Hi Raymond,

Sorry to hear you faced some issues with the webinar session today. We do use poll questions to allow our attendees to interactively respond during the study group. But they should not interfere with the webinar itself in anyway or prevent it from starting up. If you run into the issue again, please email us at wolfram-u@wolfram.com and we can try to troubleshoot it.

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
 ]

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?

Yes, it is possible by using the third argument of Overlay.

Here is an example from the documentation (ref/Overlay#53834658):

Overlay[{Slider2D[], Graphics[{Opacity[.2], Disk[]}]}, All, 1]

Jayanta, thank you very much for the instructive reply.

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

Hi Pål,

Something like this?

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

After you downloaded/unpacked the course material you find it as "OutputDeleteUtility.wl" in folder "Supporting Files"

Yes it seems that the controls from only one layer can be activated. You can however use Row/Column/Grid in that layer for keeping multiple controls.

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 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.

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]
 ]

Wrapping the contents with Dynamic and setting ImageSize->Automatic make the contents evaluate only when the particular tabs are clicked. Without these settings, TabView or PaneSelector evaluates all the contents before displaying. Thus the settings help in reducing the initial loading time.

Some more details can be found here: tutorial/Views#23068646

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

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.

Hi Gerald,

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

Week 3 Recap, Live UI Development and Mini Projects Solutions is not available.

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

Thank you so much, Vincent!

I'm having trouble finding further information on the use of "callKernel" in the Wolfram documentation. I'm hoping someone can direct me to further my understanding or provide an explanation so that I understand more how it functions in examples such as in Session 13 Tip and Tricks for Effective UI design example of a Button disabled until computation finishes ...

DynamicModule[{enabled = True},
 Button["Print",
  enabled = False;
  Pause[2]; Print[TimeObject[]];
  enabled = True;
  ,
  Method -> "Queued",
  Enabled -> Dynamic[callKernel; enabled]
  ]
 ]

Hello Pål,

It seems that TimeConstrained is supported only for queued evaluations. So this one works:

Button["TestTimeConstrained", 
 x = TimeConstrained[Do[i^2, {i, 10000000}], 1]; Print[x], 
 Method -> "Queued"]

-- Jayanta

I'd like to use Manipulate to show a dynamic control variable's name and value in a larger font size. The following code yields the name of the scoped variable for "a" rather than its value, for example "a = Dynamic[FE`a$$189]". How do I fix this code so that the value of the dynamic variable appears with font size 20?

Manipulate[
 Grid[{{Style["a = " <> ToString[Dynamic[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, 2}]

Rohit, Thanks. Gerry