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.

Properties transformation should be enabled to render children correctly.

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

Turns the component opacity to 0 while rendering it to allow invisible interactions.

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

Auto-focus Child

Upon receiving focus, it transfers the focus to the immediately available child component. If no valid component is found, it will navigate through the available inner containers to locate the next valid element.

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.

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Actions


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 Auto-focus Child

Indicates if the focus should be passed to the first available child, upon receiving focus.

Parameter

Description

Enabled

Enabled/Disabled

Set Enabled

Disable/Enable the Container

Parameter

Description

Enabled

Enabled/Disabled

Set Focus

Request the focus for this container

Set Focusable

Sets the component to be able to receive the focus

Parameter

Description

Focusable

Flag to allow the component to be focused.

Set Invisible Component

Turns the component opacity to 0 while rendering it to allow invisible interactions.

Parameter

Description

Invisible Component

Set if the component processed even if it's invisible: True/False

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.

Conditions


Has Control

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

Compare Name

Returns true if the component's name equals the parameter

Parameter

Description

Name

Name to compare with the component picked.

Is Enabled

Returns true if the container is enabled

Is Focused

Returns true if the Container has the focus

Is Invisible Component

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

On Focus

Triggered when the container gets the focus

On Focus Lost

Triggered when the container loses focus

Expressions


Name

Component name

(c) Pixel Perfect Studio 2025

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