Profound Tips From Alex - Cluttered screen? Think Panels
By: Alex Roytman
Do you have a cluttered screen? In green-screen programming, we are often forced to abbreviate, cram, and clutter our screens just to get all of the necessary information on there. And can you blame us? When you are limited to a 24x80 area, you do the best you can.
Once web-enabled, these screens look just as confusing and cluttered as before. Even after adding checkboxes, dropdowns, buttons, and other niceties, a cluttered screen is still a cluttered screen. So, what can you do?
Think Panels.
Panels help you organize related information and implement Tabs so you can display some data more prominently than other. While traditional HTML/JavaScript ways of implementing panels are painful and laborious, Genie's Designer lets you create Field Set Panels and Tab Panels with just a few clicks of the mouse.
So, here is how you get started:
In design mode, select Add Element and then choose Field Set Panel or Tab Panel. Size and move the element to the desired location on the screen.
For tab panels, go to the Tab Names property in the properties window, and list all the tab names separating each name by a comma.
For field set panels, simply setting the Value attribute changes the panel title.
You may choose to go with the default panel look and feel or change any of the font, color, border, and background properties right in the properties window.
And the final step -- start moving elements into the panels. Simply drag and drop them in.
Pretty Simple!