Control ZOrder at runtime

Syntec

I am creating a custom UI including Window elements (title bar, menubar, borders) I have a custom class CustomWindow which is a subclass of Window.

To add custom window elements I am doing it by code, say in the Opening event of the CustomWindow Class

Var myBorder As New CustomWindowBorder
myBorder.Left = 0
myBorder.Top = 0
myBorder.Width = Me.Width
myBorder.Height = Me.Height
#... keep initializing the border
Me.Add(myBorder)
myBorder.Refresh()

The issue I have is the border canvas is placed overtop all the control placed in the designer and now that transparent pixels are not ignored by Mouse Events, the border canvas consumes all mouse events making the window controls unreachable. I can get around this by adding individual left,top,right,bottom borders but its not as elegant.

I am wondering if there could be a way to manage z order at runtime, it seems designer controls are initialized before the opening event, so anything I do in opening is going to be on top of the designer controls. I was hoping that removing Window1 as the default window and then initializing it in App.Opening would somehow swap the order of operations but of course it doesn't.

The only other option I can think of is to build my entire UI in code but that is very tedious and 100% removes the benefit of a visual designer (its already hard enough with canvases, I somewhat get around this by generating default control state images and putting them in as backdrops for controls)

Syntec

Further to this, I notice there is no way to get Global mouse x and mouse y, could we have something like System.MouseX and System.MouseY added?

Garry

Good suggestion. Runtime control z-order is now implemented and will be included in the next release: https://feedback.objo.dev/feature/1273

Every Control now inherits four methods:

BringToFront()
MoveForward()
MoveBackward()
SendToBack()

For your original example, you can place the full-window canvas behind the designer controls immediately after adding it:

Me.Add(myBorder)
myBorder.SendToBack()
myBorder.Refresh()

The canvas remains hit-testable across its bounds, but controls stacked above it will receive mouse input normally.

Z-order changes apply only to direct siblings within the same window or container surface. They also work inside ContainerControl, GroupBox, ScrollBox, and individual PagePanel panels and TabPanel tabs. Calling a method on an unattached control, or trying to move beyond the front or back, simply has no effect.

The global mouse-position suggestion is useful too, particularly for custom window chrome, but it is a separate API design question because its screen-coordinate and multi-display behaviour need to be clearly defined. I'm not going to add it at this time.

Syntec

Garry Thank you Garry that will be very useful!

As for the global mouse position, I hope it can be added in the future. Mainly because as far as I can tell with the current implementation there is no way to do any controls that handle custom window drag movement (titlebars) or bounds dragging (borders). I will still continue developing my customUI and workaround with fixed window sizes.

Garry

I’ve added read-only System.MouseX and System.MouseY properties. They return the current global mouse position in virtual-desktop pixel coordinates:

Var x = System.MouseX
Var y = System.MouseY

The coordinates use the same coordinate system as Window.Left, Window.Top and the Display bounds. This means either value may be negative when a display is positioned above or to the left of the primary display.

This should be useful for custom window chrome, drag interactions and overlays where control-relative mouse coordinates aren’t sufficient. It will be included in the next release: https://feedback.objo.dev/feature/1287

Syntec

Garry Amazing Garry, thank you very much for the implementation, read-only is perfect (not trying to write a system hijacker or anything evil!)