Wednesday, February 5, 2014

Kill the Button

A Priest, a Rabbi and Mormon Missionaries walk into a bar. The bartender says, 'Is this some kind of a joke?'


Half of you are giggling like school girls, half of you are waiting for the punchline, and the rest haven't read this post yet. Because if you have and you're smarter than the average bear, you'd know how funny that is! A simple joke for a simple folk...

Which brings me to one of my ongoing themes... Simplicity. Standard buttons in QlikView are not simple. They look like a blue NyQuil:

Instead, give the user what they're used to on any other web site - a hyperlink:


Believe it or not, the first hyperlinks were implemented in 1966 and we've been programmed* to click them ever since. The trick is to make it work in QlikView. Fortunately, it's pretty easy.

Step One - Text Object

Create a text object. For this example, it will show/hide a Current Selections object by setting a variable. Make the text dynamic:
=If(vCurrentSelections = 1, 'Hide Current Selections','Show Current Selections')

Change the font color to a Calculated color
=If(vCurrentSelections = 1, RGB(11,0,128), RGB(0,0,255))


RGB(0,0,255) is the standard color for unclicked hyperlinks; RGB(11,0,128) is the standard color for visited hyperlinks. Simple and familiar!

Step Two - Understand DJ Mikey Fresh

1981 was epic. Ronald Reagan was sworn in. Daylight saving time was introduced in the Soviet Union (on April 1st), Donkey Kong was born, South Africa invaded Angola, The Class of '81 - The Best Class Ever - graduated from high school, and I listened to Kill the Poor by the Dead Kennedys for the first time.


The more clever among you may have noticed that only one of the steps is really necessary. Feel proud.

* Puns are always intended

2 comments:

  1. Hi Mike - you may well want to take a look at these two posts over on my blog. I am a big advocate of not using buttons that look like lozenges:

    http://www.quickintelligence.co.uk/qlikview-buttons/
    and
    http://www.quickintelligence.co.uk/keep-qlikview-simple/

    The first one even has a video attached...

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thanks Steve! Your site helped inspire these button rants.

    ReplyDelete