[Seaside] Modal dialogs that appear with their "background"

[Iwan Vosloo]

Hi there,

We would like methods similar to those that invoke the standard seaside 
dialogs (like inform:) - but with a twist. We'd like the dialog to be 
displayed WITH the current component instead of replacing it. (This is 
basically the same visual effect that a JQuery ui dialog have, but 
without any javascript involved.)

I am fairly new to seaside, so this is also a learning experience...

Our current solution works, but it seems to be the wrong way to go about 
it. I am looking for a better way. This is all happening on Pharo 1.4 
and Seaside 3.0.7

The current solution involves inheriting from WADelegation, and 
overriding its renderContentOn: to render both the contents of the 
dialog and also the previous component. This new kind of WADelegation is 
then used in a show:onAnswer:delegation: call.

What bothers me about it is that a Delegation is not supposed to be used 
for rendering stuff...as I understand it.

I have been investigating creating a normal visual Decoration that is 
created with knowledge of the current component. It is then added to a 
WAFormDialog, which I want to call:

... or something like that.

What I currently have is the code below. If I omit "html render: 
backgroundComponent" in DialogDecoration>>renderContentOn: below, the 
control flow work (of course that the backgroundComponent is not 
displayed...). As the code is here, pharo just seems to get hung up.

Other possibilities is to create a component that wraps the current one 
& adds the WAFormDialog - and calling it - but this has the same effect.

Any help appeciated...

- Iwan

ask: aString
     ^ self call: (WAYesOrNoDialog new
             addMessage: aString;
             addDecoration: (DialogDecoration new
                     backgroundComponent: self;
                     yourself);
             yourself)

WADecoration subclass: #DialogDecoration
     instanceVariableNames: 'backgroundComponent'

DialogDecoration>>initialise
     super initialize.
     backgroundComponent := nil

DialogDecoration>>backgroundComponent: aComponent
     backgroundComponent := aComponent

DialogDecoration>>renderContentOn: html
     self renderNextOn: html
     html render: backgroundComponent.