Mimic Apple Maps dropdown?

General Programming
1

What’s the best way to mimic the dropdown in Apple Maps that appears when you search for a location?

MBS plugin would be ok, but ideally I would like something cross-platform.

Currently I’m trying it with a ListBox (love the build in scrolling) but I do wonder if I should use a Canvas and/or ContainerControls instead …

2

I think that a listbox, possibly with custom context drawing, will do fine.
If you place it over a VisualEffectView and have the cell background paint event perform a clearrect, you should be able to have a similar translucency effect too.

3

yeah a listbox thats customized on a container control (so you can create and position it dynamically) should work
the popovers in the IDE are basically done this way with some additional custom drawing

4

I’ve always avoided overlapping controls. Does the advice not to overlap controls not apply to ContainerControls?

5

on macOS you can overlap controls pretty freely as it composites them very nicely

windows is … well … a mess frankly
in part this is because the native API’s for controls in Win32 do not have a compositing drawing engine - period
.Net adds a compositing engine on top of Win32 so it draws more like macOS - but Xojo doesnt use .Net
so they have done like WPF and WinForms have done and implemented pseudo transparency support - but it can REALLY slow things down and still has issues

so on macOS overlap all you want
on windows be much more careful and almost always turn transparent OFF

6

Not good for a cross-platform tool …

Thanks all!

7

I would tend to agree but its what we have
Until Xojo bases their Windows framework on .Net or some other api that MS introduces that supports composition the way macOS does its what we have
Or invests the time to really make their pseudo- transparency rock solid, accurate and fast

The worst part is that if you use multiple controls (like a canvas that you then put the container over top of) you dont have the option of manually doing the composition and just drawing the end result AND retain all the functionality you want / need

I dont know what else to suggest

8

If you use a headless window instead of a container control, you‘d avoid the overlapping issues. And could still have EffectViews to replicate Map’s looks.