3D hierarchy view

[codeincontext]

A few of the similar commercial tools allow you to rotate the visual representation around to show depth; helping you understand how your views overlap. I think this could be a handy feature for this project too, and would help give the impression that it's a viable alternative.

I haven't looked into your codebase extensively, but I was thinking of giving this a shot (with CSS) if you thought it was a good idea.

Let me know

-a

[damian-kolakowski]

hi @skattyadz, it sounds great to me

the main problem is the way how HV renders views. It fetches whole screen preview as PNG file and than set is as a background of root node. If we go for 'reveal', every node needs to have background set so if we change z-position it will render nicely.

let's try with simple CSS transforms to perform 'reveal' effect.

best

[codeincontext]

Ok, so I think there are a few options here:

1. Ignore the background of each layer and just use solid colour rects (so you can see the hierarchy). Probably the best starting point

2. Work out which frames are showing, and split the screenshot across them. I immediately see all kinds of issues with this approach though

3. Capture the background of each frame in Objective C. Don't know how possible this is. It sounds intensive, so would need to be the result of a toggle or button press

4. Do a hack of (3) by individually hiding each view from front to back and taking a new screenshot every time. This sounds unreliable and slow, but you never know; could be all you need