Dialog Requirements

Written by danm
Last modified by danm on 17 May 99

Overview

This document is a list of features planned for implementation in Mozilla dialogs. Dialogs are simply windows: we draw no distinction between dialogs and windows except the window border style. However, windows will have configurable settings and helper methods which will make them easier to treat as dialogs.

This document does not cover planned helper classes for creating and using classes of dialog, such as simple alerts. Clearly a useful facility would be wrappers around the dialogs as described below, allowing simple requests on the order of DoAlert(icon, message, buttons). Those wrappers will be a part of Mozilla, but covered elsewhere (link to be added once a document is written!)

Requirements

Features of windows which should prove useful for dialogs

• onload JavaScript callback provides a hook for initializing the window's contents from JavaScript, after the window's contents have been loaded but before they have been displayed
• C++ callbacks similar to onload, for the same purpose. There is currently a pair of callbacks surrounding the call to onload, so C++ code has a chance to modify the window both before and after the modifications coded into the XUL. However, this ability will soon be deprecated, since the callbacks require a nonstandard onload treatment.
• JavaScript and C++ callbacks for debriefing the window's contents after the user has made modified control settings but before the content model has been deleted. (See the Dialog Cookbook for a more complete explanation of this feature.) There is no plan to provide an explicit debriefing callback; this should be done in the event handler for the dismissal buttons.
• A window should be able to specify its size in the XUL. If the window's contents are described using a box, the window may be resized to fit its contents. Without a box, a proper width is difficult to calculate because of constraints of the layout engine. In that case, given a width, it should be possible to shrink the height to fit the contents. It would also be nice to be able to specify an aspect ratio.
• A DoModal method to display the window as a modal dialog. This will be accomplished internally through a captive event loop.