Container Behavior

SmartUI Container Behavior operation and ACEs.

Containers are one of the key features SmartUI offers. Although simple, they enable powerful capabilities for better organizing and structuring your UI. They provide complex navigation capabilities unlike other Construct 3 frameworks. Their main purpose is to create an operational context within an object hierarchy, allowing the framework to automatically limit interactions and group objects logically.

SmartUI always operates with a global container handler that delegates operations to lower-level containers as the user navigates. Containers are responsible for handling the Document Flow.

Containers automatically propagate Set Enabled calls to all its children.

Please be aware that all the children of the component must have enabled the properties change propagation for all the attributes: visible, opacity, x, y, width, height, etc. Otherwise, you will have to manually control children's attributes.

Properties transformation should be enabled to render children correctly.

Containers can be added to any world object without restrictions, so that you can decide what best suit your needs. They can also be nested: a container within another container.

There are no limitations on adding any object as a child of a container. SmartUI is capable of distinguishing which objects have UI-component capabilities to propagate events among them, without affecting the non-UI components of your hierarchy.

Properties

Property	Description
Enabled	Enables or Disables the container and all its children.
Index	Index of the container within layout. Used for focusing the elements in the sequence order.
Invisible Component	Allows interactions for the component even if the object is invisible.
Focusable	Marks if the component can have the focus.
Automatic-Color	Enables the component to darken a bit when its state is Disabled or when it's focused. Auto-Color is meant to provide a quick identification of the component state. For more specialized customizations, use the component events and disable this check.
Name	Unique name string for identifying the selected container

Smart UI Container ACEs

Smart UI Container behavior groups UI components, provides focusing abilities and default interactions to navigate within the container and its children components that uses Smart UI behaviors, and handles cascading Enabling/Disabling events. It also responds to pointer interactions prioritizing by zIndex.

Actions

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Set Enabled

Disable/Enable the Container

Parameter	Description
Enabled	Enabled/Disabled

Set Name

Sets the name of the container.

Parameter	Description
Name	Name of the component

Set Sequence

Sets the sequence index to influence the selection of components.

Parameter	Description
Index	Sequence index value. E.g. Indexes values of 0 are processed before indexes values of 1 and 2.

Set Focusable

Sets the component to be able to receive the focus

Parameter	Description
Focusable	Flag to allow the component to be focused.

Set Focus

Request the focus for this container

Focus First Element

Request the focus for the first interactable element of the container.

Focus Last Element

Request the focus for the last interactable element of the container.

Set Invisible Component

Sets whether the component should be processed when it's invisible. Opacity is not taken in consideration.It doesn't affect the visibility attribute of the object, you are responsible of turning it visible or invisible when needed.

Parameter	Description
Invisible Component	Set if the component processed even if it's invisible: True/False

Conditions

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Is Enabled

Returns true if the container is enabled

Is Invisible Component

Returns true if the Container is configured as an invisible component.

Compare Name

Returns true if the component's name equals the parameter

Parameter	Description
Name	Name to compare with the component picked.

Is Focused

Returns true if the Container has the focus

Has Control

True if the container has the control to navigate over components.

On Focus

Triggered when the container gets the focus

On Focus Lost

Triggered when the container loses focus

Expressions

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Name

Component name

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