I thought others might find this useful:
First of all, do not start with a "BlanK' template. There are dozens, if not more than a hundred, configuration settings and files scattered throughout the template. With blank template you have to fill them all in manually. If some of them aren't filled in or filled in correctly, the template won't run.
Start with the default template and modify it as you want. That way you make sure you have a template that will run and you can test very quickly.
What I did was take the default template, replace the system button images and add the controller info (IP address and keys) and then save this as a starting template from which to deviate.
The standard buttons are stored in the “template” file.
If you have a project in the explorer on the right side
In the “Touchscreen” folder are your touchscreens, e.g. “New 5.7e”
Immediately under the specific touchscreen the project for that touchscreen is listed, e.g “New Design”
If you click the design “New Design”
The look at the “Properties” tab below, scroll down toward the bottom of the properties and you will see a bunch of image files listed.
This part isn’t documented very well (or at all).
The Security Panel is under the “System Images” section.
It is constructed from the four buttons, “Button Image”, “Blank Center”, “Blank Left”, and “Blank Right”, and the 3 function buttons “Police” for police, “Fire” for fire and “Auxiliary” for medical/EMT.
I played with this quite a bit.
You can not adjust the between button spacings directly, and you can't directly edit the panel (which is disappointing).
But you can trick the layout with button sizes and window sizes to make some changes.
You can’t adjust the size of the buttons too much from the defaults because these buttons are used in other places and what may look good in one panel will get cut off or crunched together in another.
It’s been a while, but IIRC the layout is formatted off the Police button from the top left. You can adjust some of the internal button spacing by adjusting the size of the panel. But. if you make the panel width too small stuff get’s cut off. HAI added some changes to the security panel in the recent AS update. You can now edit the button fonts separately from the message font. Which helps making the text on the buttons look right.
I settled on 88x46 size for the buttons.
I played some tricks with the spacing of the other function buttons. They are PNGs with transparent backgrounds. So I added extra blank space to get the alignment I wanted. The icon images are all the same size, but they float on transparent backgrounds of different sizes.
The police button is 86x92.
The fire button is 86x72.
The aux button is 86x70.
My security panel is 620x346 in the layout.
I use a 14point LCD font and an 11 point button font.
Remember the security panel is double sided.
When you hit the zone button the second panel appears.
So the main panel may look alright, but if you get the button sizes wrong the secondary panel won’t.
That properties tab is where all the other button images for the other panels are stored as well.
Many of the internal panels use those same left, right, center buttons.
Which is why you need to make sure the size will accommodate all the panels properly.
The object list panels WILL dynamically resize the buttons horizontally.
So I picked a good vertical button height to get 5 buttons high but didn’t really care too much about the width.
If you make a list wider and wider it just stretches the list buttons out to the left from the scroll arrows along the right side.
In some screens I only had a few items (for instance 3 T-stats) and I didn’t want or need the scroll arrows. So I used another trick and positioned the list object so it was hanging off the right side of the screen. This truncated the list and hid the scroll arrows from view.
The list does not dynamically rescale vertically. The scroll buttons area is fixed. If you make the panel too high it just adds space below the scroll buttons and it looks bad. So you have to play with the size of the scroll buttons and height of the list button to get a look you like.
The lists panel buttons are “Scroll Up”, “Scroll Down”, “Page Up”, “Page Down” and “List Bar”.
I used sizes 54x86 for all 4 of the scroll buttons and 200x57 for the list bar.
This panel is used in A LOT of things.
Edited by Desert_AIP, 21 December 2011 - 01:36 PM.
