Enabled := False makes color Glyphs disappear

[dormky 2]

(These are TBitBtns)

 

In the first image, all buttons are enabled. In the second, the bottom two are disabled. It seems that the disabling makes every color except for pure black completely disappear (see the grey at the top of the pencil disappeared too). What can I do to prevent this ? The icon should just be greyed out, not entirely disappear.

I don't want to make greyed out glyphs and switch them around for literally every button in the program either.

 

Although if it comes down to it, I guess I could always have a custom button that takes the existing glyph and greys it ? But that sounds finicky and there's probably a better way of solving this.

 

Thanks !

Edited July 17 by dormky

[Uwe Raabe 2057]

If you use the Glyph property of TBitBtn, this will indeed be quite tedious. The preferred way is to use the Images property to assign an image list and set the ImageIndex/ImageName and DisabledImageIndex/DisabledImageName to the proper icon. There are also such properties for the Hot, Pressed and Selected states.

[dormky 2]

Such a shame.

 

It seems the Images property only exists for TButton. I've tried adding my bitmap to the property but it doesn't seem to work like the Glyph property (double click to edit). How am I supposed to add it ?

[Attila Kovacs 629]

Use TImageList, ideally a descendant that can handle SVGs.

[Die Holländer 45]

The JVCL has a JvXPButton..

 

 

Maybe you can change the buttons by editing the *.dfm file of the Form.. 😬

Edited July 17 by Die Holländer

[Uwe Raabe 2057]

35 minutes ago, dormky said:

It seems the Images property only exists for TButton.

Probably depends on the Delphi version you are using.

[PeterBelow 238]

4 hours ago, dormky said:

(These are TBitBtns)

 

In the first image, all buttons are enabled. In the second, the bottom two are disabled. It seems that the disabling makes every color except for pure black completely disappear (see the grey at the top of the pencil disappeared too). What can I do to prevent this ? The icon should just be greyed out, not entirely disappear.

I don't want to make greyed out glyphs and switch them around for literally every button in the program either.

 

Although if it comes down to it, I guess I could always have a custom button that takes the existing glyph and greys it ? But that sounds finicky and there's probably a better way of solving this.

 

Thanks !

Do you know that you can supply up to four images in the bitmap you use for the Glyph property? See here for what they are used for. If your bitmap only contains one glyph image the control will synthesize the disabled image from it and the results are often not that good.

[Die Holländer 45]

4 hours ago, dormky said:

(These are TBitBtns)

I don't want to make greyed out glyphs and switch them around for literally every button in the program either.

 

[corneliusdavid 214]

8 hours ago, dormky said:

Such a shame.

 

It seems the Images property only exists for TButton. I've tried adding my bitmap to the property but it doesn't seem to work like the Glyph property (double click to edit). How am I supposed to add it ?

What is "such a shame"? Perhaps you're just unfamiliar with current best practices?

 

There are many components that use the Images property:

• TBitBtn
• TSpeedButton
• TCategoryPanelGroup
• TMainMenu
• TActionList
• TTabControl
• TPageControl

And many more. Plus, many third-party components use this property as well. It's far more versatile than the old Glyph property.

 

Search for articles and YouTube tutorials--you'll find plenty of information.

[dormky 2]

21 hours ago, PeterBelow said:

Do you know that you can supply up to four images in the bitmap you use for the Glyph property? See here for what they are used for. If your bitmap only contains one glyph image the control will synthesize the disabled image from it and the results are often not that good. 

Yes, but doing this for every icon in this 1M lines project does not make sense if there is another solution out there. Especially as greyed out an existing image is not complicated in itself, it's just the implementation in TBitBtn that's faulty.

[dormky 2]

15 hours ago, corneliusdavid said:

What is "such a shame"? Perhaps you're just unfamiliar with current best practices? 

 

There are many components that use the Images property:

• TBitBtn
• TSpeedButton
• TCategoryPanelGroup
• TMainMenu
• TActionList
• TTabControl
• TPageControl

And many more. Plus, many third-party components use this property as well. It's far more versatile than the old Glyph property.

 

Search for articles and YouTube tutorials--you'll find plenty of information.

It is a shame that TBitBtn's method of greying out an icon is to make black grey, and every other color white. That is not a good method imo as it leads to problems like this in this post, forcing the developer to put in more work (re-implementing the greying or creating greyed out icons).

A UI framework should have correct greying, that's not something up for debate.

[Die Holländer 45]

1 hour ago, dormky said:

Yes, but doing this for every icon in this 1M lines project does not make sense if there is another solution out there.

So, why did they/you use this button in the first place and how, after 1M lines, it became suddenly a problem?

I would just use the JVCL JvXPButton that will gray out the button as you like.

[dormky 2]

1 hour ago, Die Holländer said:

So, why did they/you use this button in the first place and how, after 1M lines, it became suddenly a problem?

I would just use the JVCL JvXPButton that will gray out the button as you like.

Those lines were literally written before I was born. Believe me if I could throw it all away I would but alas that's not realistic.

Try to explain to management why we'd need so much time and testing to "make the icons grey" :')

[JonRobertson 72]

2 minutes ago, dormky said:

Try to explain to management why we'd need so much time and testing to "make the icons grey"

Because every icon in a 1M line project would be affected?

[dormky 2]

1 hour ago, JonRobertson said:

Because every icon in a 1M line project would be affected?

A search for TBitBtn just gave me 1842 results, and that's just the "main" part of the program. Now not all of these buttons have icons of course, but a significant portion does. We're talking at least hundreds of buttons to update and check here.

So no it's not every icon, but it's still a whole freaking lot.

[Uwe Raabe 2057]

What Delphi version are you using? TBitBtn supports Images since Delphi 10.4. If by any chance you are able to use one of the more recent Delphi versions, I suggest to use the image list approach. It is way easier to maintain, especially when you plan to support High DPI in the future.

[JonRobertson 72]

8 minutes ago, dormky said:

A search for TBitBtn just gave me 1842 results, and that's just the "main" part of the program. Now not all of these buttons have icons of course, but a significant portion does. We're talking at least hundreds of buttons to update and check here.

So no it's not every icon, but it's still a whole freaking lot.

You can also search for Glyph.Data in the DFM files. There are components other than TBitBtn that have a Glyph property, but each of those should (I think) be a visual component that has an image stored in the component that would be displayed in the app.

 

I agree with others that you should either replace TBitBtn with a component that accomplishes your goal or switch to using either an image list or TImageCollection and TVirtualImageList. The later would be a better investment of the time required. You may also want to look at High DPI Image List Support.

[Die Holländer 45]

I wonder how difficult it is to make your own component TMyBitBtn based on TBitBtn and overwrite the

way the enable/disable picture works, like how the JvXPButton does it or if disabled then change all

the pixels (only 32x32 ?) from color to grayscale in the ondraw. Then modify all the DFM TBitBtn Text to TMyBitBtn..

[Lajos Juhász 293]

Sooner or later you will have to rewrite the UI to be more high-DPI friendly. Changing an image should not require a lot of testing. I did that for several "1M" line of code applications without a problem. Yes it requires time, but it is a must for an old application to be able to work on "modern monitors".

 

(A TBitbtn style program I bet looks very outdated)