Combo Box - how to quickly collapse its menu?

Question

Hi, does anyone know any way(s) to quickly collapse the menu of a Combo Box once the selection is made?  I have a Combo Box and do a get selected to get the selection then it proceeds to another script which takes maybe another 5 sec to fully initiate.  But during this 5 sec, the Combo Box menu remains open and will not collapse until the other script finishes.  I would like to have the Combo Box menu collapse nearly instantaneously after the get selected.  I found that changing the focus does this (e.g. caption then remove caption), but this is kind of kludgy.  Any other thoughts?  thanks, DJ

ih · Answer

You could replace the caption with a box giving the users a status message:

win = new window( "test",
	cb1 = combo box(
		{"<choose>", "apple", "orange", "banana", "kiwi", "tangerine"},
		fruit = cb1 << get text;
		tempwin = New Window("Your query is running", Show Menu(0), Show Toolbars(0), 
		Text Box("Your query is running,\!njust a moment..."));
		wait(2);
		tempwin << close window;
	)
);

djhanson · Answer

Haha! Wouldn't you know I had this same issue 4 years later.  I'm using JMP 12.2.0.  So I ended up here to figure out a good fix.

So the Combobox() works wonders for me with its single selection and nice compact form factor.  In this case now, I'm having it execute some SQL and that of course takes 3-5 sec to execute.  While it is doing this, its selection menu that drives the SQL filter, would stay open for 3-5 sec after the single selection of it.  Mostly its a bit annoying that's it.  So I did this same fix and it worked well with the caption add/remove which quickly collapses the Combobox() menu.  Doing a wait(0) had no good effect in this case.

cmb12=combobox({"thing1","thing2","thing3"},
SQLselect=cmb12<<get selected;

caption("");caption(remove); //forces menu to collapse quickly post selection

//SQL.jsl later uses SQLselect selection as a filter
include(dirS || "\" || "SQL.jsl"); //3-5 sec is normal
);

ms · Answer

I'm not able to reproduce the problem. For the code below, the combo box collapses quickly (JMP 13 for Macintosh).

Not sure what's going on. Your "slowJSL" may contain code that can take advantage of all computing resources (multiprocessing?).

// Save example of a "slow" jsl file  
Save Text File("$SAMPLE_SCRIPTS/slowJSL.jsl", "repeat({char(randominteger(1,1e6))},1e7);
    print(fruit)");
New Window("test",
    cb1 = Combo Box(
        {"<choose>", "apple", "orange", "banana", "kiwi", "tangerine"},
        fruit = cb1 << get text;
        Include("$SAMPLE_SCRIPTS/slowJSL.jsl");
    )
);
// Delete example jsl by running the line below
// Delete File("$SAMPLE_SCRIPTS/slowJSL.jsl");