HyperCard 2.4.1 Home stack changes for enhanced left/right arrow buttons
by Brendan Bellina 11/2022
Benefits of these changes
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Unenhanced the Home stack allows 5 Home Card cards to be displayed along the bottom. Additional cards can be created via the New Card menu option and accessed via the arrow buttons, but their names will not be displayed along the bottom of the Home card. When enhanced any added cards will scroll along the bottom when the arrow buttons are used to navigate. This encourages spreading QuickLinks across multiple cards rather than crowding them all onto the five standard Home cards.
Unenhanced the left/right arrow buttons in the Home stack cycle through all cards in the stack, not just the Home Card background. When enhanced the buttons advance only through the Home Cards. The User Preference cards remain accessible via the Home menu.
Holding down the option key while clicking on an enhanced left/right arrow button will execute their original unenhanced logic.
Known issues
~~~~~~~~~~
The enhanced buttons require Home cards to be uniquely named.
When creating new Home Cards, if a name is not specified for the new card then standard behavior is that it is defaulted to "Untitled Card" which can lead to duplicate card names. For this reason if an "Untitled Card" button is scrolled off the screen and then back onto the screen its name will be changed to its unique card id.
When deleting the last Home card some Home menu options will be incorrectly disabled. To reenable them select Preferences from the Home menu and then return to the Home cards. This is a bug in the unmodified Home stack code that is more noticable since the enhanced left/right arrow buttons make adding more Home cards a more reasonable thing to do than crowding all QuickLinks on the five standard Home cards.
The Home Card title buttons are not defined in a button family, so it is possible for multiple of them to be hilited at the same time or none hilited. While this should not happen, if it does then use the arrow buttons to scroll through the cards and the hiliting will be corrected.
Applying these Enhancements
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
1. Add the following to the "Home Cards" background script":
---
Message Handlers added to this script by B Bellina 11/2022:
openCard, resetToFirstCard
on openCard -- added by B Bellina 11/2022
-- required for enhanced "left arrow" "right arrow" buttons
put ((number of bg btn id 169) - 1) into homeCardBtnCnt
-- Determine which btn to hilite
get the short name of this card
put false into foundIt
repeat with i = 1 to homeCardBtnCnt
if short name of bg btn i is it then
put true into foundIt
exit repeat
end if
end repeat
if foundIt then
put i into foundCardNum
repeat with i = 1 to homeCardBtnCnt
set hilite of bg btn i to (i = foundCardNum)
end repeat
else
-- failed to find so reset to first card (normally Welcome to...)
resetToFirstCard
end if
pass openCard -- so others can use it
end openCard
on resetToFirstCard -- added by B Bellina 11/2022
-- required for enhanced "left arrow" "right arrow" buttons
if short name of this card is not short name of cd 1 then go cd 1
put ((number of bg btn id 169) - 1) into homeCardBtnCnt
repeat with i = 1 to homeCardBtnCnt
set name of bg btn i to short name of cd i
set hilite of bg btn i to false
end repeat
set hilite of bg btn 1 to true
end resetToFirstCard
---
2. Replace the mouseUp handler of the "left arrow" button with the following:
on mouseUp
-- enhanced "left arrow" button logic
-- by Brendan Bellina 11/2022
-- also requires openCard and resetToFirstCard handlers in the
-- background script
if the optionKey is down then
-- original logic for the button
visual effect wipe right
go prev card
else -- enhanced logic
lock screen
set cursor to watch
-- how many buttons along the bottom, typically 5
put ((number of bg btn id 169) - 1) into homeCardBtnCnt
-- how many home cards (they are cards 1...n)
put number of cards of this bg into homeCardCnt
if homeCardBtnCnt = homeCardCnt then
go to prev card of this bg
unlock screen with visual effect wipe right
else -- more cards than buttons
-- determine which button is hilited
put 0 into fromCdBtnNum
put short name of this cd into thisCd
repeat with i = 1 to homeCardBtnCnt
if hilite of bg btn i is true or ¬
short name of bg btn i is thisCd then
put i into fromCdBtnNum
exit repeat
end if
end repeat
if fromCdBtnNum = 0 then -- messed up so do default action
go to prev card of this bg
unlock screen with visual effect wipe right
exit mouseUp
end if
if fromCdBtnNum is 1 then
-- scroll all of the buttons except the rightmost to the right
repeat with i = (homeCardBtnCnt - 1) down to 1
set name of bg btn (i + 1) to short name of bg btn i
end repeat
put number of prev cd of this bg into prevCdNum
get short name of cd prevCdNum
if it is empty or it is "Untitled Card" then -- no dups allowed
put id of cd prevCdNum into it
set name of cd prevCdNum to it
end if
set name of bg btn 1 to short name of cd prevCdNum
go to prev cd of this bg
repeat with i = 1 to homeCardBtnCnt
set hilite of bg btn i to (i = 1)
end repeat
unlock screen with visual effect wipe right
else
go to prev cd of this bg
repeat with i = 1 to homeCardBtnCnt
set hilite of bg btn i to (i = fromCdBtnNum - 1)
end repeat
unlock screen with visual effect wipe right
end if
end if
end if
end mouseUp
3. Replace the mouseUp handler of the "right arrow" button with the following:
on mouseUp
-- enhanced "right arrow" button logic
-- by Brendan Bellina 11/2022
-- also requires openCard and resetToFirstCard handlers in the
-- background script
if the optionKey is down then
-- original logic for the button
visual effect wipe left
go next card
else -- enhanced logic
lock screen
set cursor to watch
-- how many buttons along the bottom, typically 5
put ((number of bg btn id 169) - 1) into homeCardBtnCnt
-- how many home cards (they are cards 1...n)
put number of cards of this bg into homeCardCnt
if homeCardBtnCnt = homeCardCnt then
go to next card of this bg
unlock screen with visual effect wipe left
else -- more cards than buttons
-- determine which button is hilited
put 0 into fromCdBtnNum
put short name of this cd into thisCd
repeat with i = 1 to homeCardBtnCnt
if hilite of bg btn i is true or ¬
short name of bg btn i is thisCd then
put i into fromCdBtnNum
exit repeat
end if
end repeat
if fromCdBtnNum = 0 then -- messed up so do default action
go to next card of this bg
unlock screen with visual effect wipe left
exit mouseUp
end if
if fromCdBtnNum is homeCardBtnCnt then
-- scroll all of the buttons except the leftmost to the left
repeat with i = 2 to homeCardBtnCnt
set name of bg btn (i - 1) to short name of bg btn i
end repeat
put number of next cd of this bg into nextCdNum
get short name of cd nextCdNum
if it is empty or it is "Untitled Card" then -- no dups allowed
put id of cd nextCdNum into it
set name of cd nextCdNum to it
end if
set name of bg btn homeCardBtnCnt to short name of cd nextCdNum
go to next cd of this bg
repeat with i = 1 to homeCardBtnCnt
set hilite of bg btn i to (i = homeCardBtnCnt)
end repeat
unlock screen with visual effect wipe left
else
go to next cd of this bg
repeat with i = 1 to homeCardBtnCnt
set hilite of bg btn i to (i = fromCdBtnNum + 1)
end repeat
unlock screen with visual effect wipe left
end if
end if
end if
end mouseUp
