A teensy idea

[wdstudios_llc121]

I've been living under a rock for the past couple of months, not paying attention to the updates of Snap! that much, but I had an idea. Say you had a menu, that needs to be dynamic, like the ones in Snap! that update depending on the amount of objects/costumes.

What if, you added the ability for a set of blocks to be ran that would output a list that Snap! would use to generate the MenuMorph that the dropdown menu (such as the one shown below) would show?

Might sound a bit complicated, but it's just an idea.

[cymplecy]

Dynamic menus are one of the biggest losses when JavaScript was banned as a tool for generating them and anyway of getting something back would be great

[bh]

Yeah, that'd be nice. One technical issue is that a bug in your custom menu code could result in an infinite loop in the UI. So we'd have to make sure you can escape from that.

Meanwhile, there's a custom menu feature built into the ASK AND WAIT block, and a library to help you construct custom menus.

[ego-lay_atman-bay]

@bh

a bug in your custom menu code could result in an infinite loop in the UI

Couldn't you do it something like how generic when blocks throw an error when the condition takes too long?

[cookieclickerer33]

I like this! Instead of using the mettaprogramming features to set a menu on multiple blocks (this is usally very laggy) this would be a nice alternitive

[bh]

@ego-lay_atman-bay

Couldn't you do it something like how generic when blocks throw an error when the condition takes too long?

Oh, sure, I didn't mean to suggest that this is an unsolvable problem. Just that implementing it isn't quite like falling off a log. And we need a Snap! API for one input slot interrogating another input slot.

[wdstudios_llc121]

I was thinking of something that would end with a report block, but it would output something that you would see in the normal block editor menu

but it would output a string of text that you would see in this

[bh]

Yes, that's a possible interface, although I'd prefer that it output a list rather than a text string. :~)

[wdstudios_llc121]

Perhaps you could use the "Menus" library as a base.

[bh]

@wdstudios_llc121

Perhaps you could use the "Menus" library as a base.

Yes, I agree, it'd be nice to have one API for menus rather than two different ones.

[wdstudios_llc121]

could we have @jens thoughts on this?