Tasker: Scenes

Scenes

Introduction

A scene is a graphical user-interface consisting of a collection of elements to which tasks can be attached to be run when the user interacts with them e.g. by tapping them.

Tasker uses scenes for things like popup dialogs, menus and getting input from the user but scenes can actually be displayed by the user whenever desired, meaning they can be used for things like creating simple user-designed applications or showing extra controls over the top of (selected) existing applications.

Scenes are completely user-customisable via a drag-and-drop graphical editor.

Displaying Scenes

Actions: `Enter Key, Lock, Menu, Popup, Popup Task Buttons` and `Variable Query`

These actions use a built-in scene with the same name as their action. After creating a task with such an action, the associated scene can be found under the Scenes tab on the main Tasker screen. That scene can be edited so that e.g. all Popup actions have the same style because they all use the same scene.

The parameters specified in the action are applied to the scene before it is show. For instance, if the scene has a Title element it will be set to the title specified in the action and the scene resized appropriately.

It might be desirable to have a different style for e.g. some Popup actions, in which case:

clone the built-in scene long-clicking on it in the Scenes tab
edit the clone to change the contents
in a Popup action, specify that the cloned scene should be used by clicking on the Layout parameter in the action edit screen.

Scene Category Actions: `Create Scene, Show Scene, Hide Scene, Destroy Scene`

These allow a completely free hand over when a scene should be displayed and it's life-cycle. They all act on scenes pre-designed in the Scenes tab.

Usually, only Show Scene and Destroy Scene will be used, however sometimes it's useful for a scene to be created but not visible to the user:

by hiding a scene instead of completely destroying it, the settings of the elements are retained for next time it is shown
the values of the elements in the scene can be changed to track certain events so that the scene can be immediately displayed when required without any configuration

Scene Elements

Each scene is comprised of a number of elements.

An element has three main components:

Geometry

It's size and position on the screen. An element's geometry is specified in the scene editor.

Content

How it looks on the screen.

Specified under the UI tab in the element editor. Some elements also have a Background tab. A Menu element has an additional Items tab.

Event Tasks

What should happen when the user interacts with the element.

Specified under the right-most tabs after clicking on the element in the element editor. There are different events depending on the type of element. For instance, a Button has tap and long-tap events while a Slider has a value-set event.

Event tasks are run at priority one higher than the task which displayed the scene

Local variables set by event tasks are visible to all tasks in the same scene.

Scene Element Actions

In the Scenes action category, there are several actions for setting the properties of scene elements. You can use these for a wide variety of purposes e.g.

when a slider value is set, change the zoom of an associated map element
set the size of an element depending on current light level
animate elements around a scene

Note that actions that affect scene elements can only be used when the scene has already been created (via Create Scene or Show Scene). The scene does not have to be visible.