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I have a GUI with a number of TabView and other Manipulate controls. Sometimes clicking from one Tabview to the other can take a while, and I would like to have a global "Please wait" indicator.

So one way is to implement it for each button or slider, but I would essentially like to have a visual indicator that will show if any cell in my notebook is being evaluated.

Any ideas or suggestions? (Have searched for answers here but I only found those related to progress bars for a specific calculation)

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what OS is your GUI running on? – rcollyer Sep 6 '12 at 20:29
Doesn't your notebook window change its title to Running... <filename>? Mine does and in addition, also shows a ring around the icon to indicate that it is evaluating something (might be mac only). – rm -rf♦ Sep 6 '12 at 20:42
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OS X, but it is for a Windows implementation. So yes, I know that the cells are evaluating - you can see it by the double cell bracket, but this is too subtle for the end users, and they need a clear graphical sign that something is happening, or they will keep on clicking on various buttons :-) – BlueMac Sep 6 '12 at 20:52
I can't play with it right now, but see if you can do something with $DynamicEvaluation. It returns True if inside a Dynamic and False otherwise. A DockedCell might be a good place to place an indicator – rm -rf♦ Sep 6 '12 at 21:51
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Why is there a delay? TabViews run everything at the beginning and always treat the dynamic content on all tabs as if visible. Is it just a delay because of front end rendering or you placed some dynamic code dependent on the current selected tab that has to run when it is changed? – Rojo Sep 7 '12 at 0:42

1 Answer

up vote 6 down vote accepted

First, let's make a 'busy' animation

wait =
 DynamicModule[
    {i = 1, b = Import["http://ims.cartoninjas.net/manifoldtemplate/images/BusyAnimation.gif"]},
    Dynamic@Refresh[b[[i = Mod[i + 1, Length[b], 1]]], 
                    UpdateInterval -> .1, 
                    TrackedSymbols -> {}
    ]
 ]

enter image description here

Now, lets make a radio button bar to control the busy state in this demo:

Column[{"Waiting", RadioButtonBar[Dynamic[waiting], {True, False}]}]

Mathematica graphics

Finally, here's the TabView. I use Overlay to overlay the busy animation in the busy state and prevent selection of the TabView:

g = {"Beethoven", "CastleWall", "Cone", "Cow"};
Overlay[
  {
    TabView[(# -> ExampleData[{"Geometry3D", #}] &) /@ g], 
    Dynamic@If[waiting, wait, "", ""]
  }, 
  {1, 2}, 
  Dynamic[If[waiting, 0, 1, 1]], 
  Alignment -> Top
]

Mathematica graphics

It is the responsibility of your code to set and unset the busy state. Probably somewhere in the beginning and end, respectively, of a Dynamic piece of code in TabView.

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