What are the best practices to make widgets appear and disappear during runtime?

[lazlo]

Say I have tooltips, windows, or other components that will open / close during runtime (be it on hover, on click, etc.).

What are the best practices to do so?

Ideally, my objectives are:

• The GameObject would stay Active so it can be interacted with properly without an update frame.
• The widget would be visible (active, enabled, and alpha 1) while in the editor, but not by default while playing.
• The colliders would stop to work when the widget is hidden (I'm guessing alpha 0 on the parent won't work for this).
• Tweens could be used (like a tween alpha) for a smooth transition.

Is that possible? If so, how?

For sake of asking a clearer question, how would I fill, for example, this code:

1. public class TogglableWidget : MonoBehaviour
2. {
3.         public void Start()
4.         {
5.                 // Probably hide it?
6.         }
7.  
8.         public void Open()
9.         {
10.                 // Make it visible and functional.
11.         }
12.  
13.         public void Close()
14.         {
15.                 // Make it invisible and eventless.
16.         }
17. }
18.  

[ArenMook]

This seems like an overly generic question for me to answer, to be honest.

I will say this though: setting alpha to 0 will effectively make the widget invisible to events.