Blinking Text Box

Occasionally, I’m asked if QlikView supports blinking text. Here’s a method that you can use if it is necessary. I don’t recommend this technique unless you have some kind of seldom used message that the document user absolutely must see (like “This data is invalid” or “Warning. Your chair is on fire!”) In any case, it is easy to try it out and see what the effect looks like.

Text in a text expression can be made to blink between two alternate forms with something like this:

=if(Odd(Second(Now(1))), '*** Hey, Look ***', '/// *** \\\')

Something more effective at attracting attention is to blink the background color of a text box.  Your text box should show constant text or a text expression that does not use the Now() function. And, the background color expression could be made to blink between two colors like this:

=if(Odd(Second(Now(1))),Cyan(),Yellow())

Expressions like these could be used to “blink” any of the document properties that can be controlled with an expression. The Now function in these expressions does use up some of your computer’s CPU time. A single expression is negligible but if you had several of these expressions using the Now function it could consume more than a few percent of your CPU capacity.


[The fish x-ray pictures in this blog posting and the one last week make great iPad wallpaper images]

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