Control Panel
 


 The Control Panel

The Control Panel shows the hierarchy of the application's components.

Clicking an icon with the left mouse button will cause the component associated to this icon to be displayed with selected-state emphasis. All the Choosers as well as all the Settings Areas will be updated immediately, according to the selected component.

By clicking the right mouse button, you will get a popup menu associated to the component.

By dragging and dropping icons inside the same Control Panel, you may change the components order. For this, you should use the left mouse button. This facility may be of great help when re-arranging in order components in a panel which has already been set a gridbag layout, You may also use this feature for gathering together toggle buttons to create a multi-exclusion group. Though changing some column order in a JTable may be done directly from the desktop by using the mouse, this order may also be changed from the control panel.

The use of the Ctrl or Shift key together with a right click will allow you to copy a component (and its settings) or to move it outside of its current parent allowing you to change the whole hierarchy of your components with your mouse.

By dragging and dropping icons to the VisualMust workplace (i.e. desktop) or to an interface user which is being designed, you may copy or move those components, depending on the Ctrl and Shift keys. For this, you should use the right mouse button.

The components displayed in the Control Panel can also be used as target for a drop. This feature will allow you to add any component to any container that is not directly visible on the VisualMust desktop (for example when you have to add a subpanel to a JPanel for which a BorderLayout has been defined). Obviously, in that case, VisualMust will try to obey a given layout or will locate the dropped component in the upper left corner of the target (at point 0,0).

Some other Drag and Drop operations may be realized. For further information, see the Drag and Drop paragraph.

If you want the size of icons to be changed, you may find some information in the Interface Builder Preferences LookAndFeel (Treeview Large Icons options) paragraph.