Hi Nick, yeah that custom UI pre-dates the browser mechanism so it doesn't include it.

Are you trying to use the browser in the "inside" mode or the "adjacent" mode?

- Michael

I figured it pre-dated by the posts, but there are not many other custom UI's posted. Either, I have a hotkey for switching, but I prefer inside most of the time and inside would be fine for permenant residence.

While I'm at it, is there a way to put the close/minimize/maximize buttons in the default Windows location (upper right)?




Thanks for the reply.

Hi Nick, so for inside mode the scene browser is defined by a tag at the bottom of the other palettes. That custom UI is probably missing that, but if you add it in it should work.

To find what you need to add, go to the default UI file SidePane.htm and go near the bottom, there is a piece of it that looks like this:

<div id="SceneBrowserContainer">
     <some content inside of it>
</div>

That's the piece you want to copy into the same location near the bottom of the customized UI's side pane.


> While I'm at it, is there a way to put the close/minimize/maximize
> buttons in the default Windows location (upper right)?

Yes, they should go there if you change the position of the side pane (under Options > General > Side pane position) to the right-hand side instead of the left-hand side.

They're currently part of the top of the side pane so they move along with it.

It could be possible to further customize that custom UI to put them along the upper bar though, to do that go find the file named SidePaneHeader.htm from the default UI and there are some tags in there labeled <moi:WindowControlButton> which are the definitions of those close buttons, put those in the file for that custom top bar.

Basically, there is not any nice "just check a button" method for doing what you are asking for, but it is possible to do it by some further editing of the UI files.

- Michael

Thanks. I found what the browser section and inserted it into the custom UI, but all I got was a tiny little strip. Do I need to declare the browser object further up? Is there another .htm file I need to edit?

Hi Nick, it kind of looks like the text label for the browser section is what is missing. I guess probably the custom UI also has an old UI strings file in it - that's the file named EnglishStrings.txt inside the \ui folder. If you got an old version of that it would not have the string label for "Scene browser" in it.

To fix it, you could either copy the default MoI v2 EnglishStrings.txt file over top of the old one, which should then make that string defined, or you could go to the part of the scene browser that has this in it:

<moi:TabButton id="SceneBrowserTab" class="SingleTabButton"><moi:Text textid="Scene browser inline header"/></moi:TabButton>

And instead replace that <moi:Text> part with just hard coded text like this:

<moi:TabButton id="SceneBrowserTab" class="SingleTabButton">Scene browser</moi:TabButton>

That thing that says <moi:Text ...> means to look up a string with that id out of the string table, which uses the current language's string table, that's how different languages work. But it won't work if you've got an old string table that doesn't have an entry for that text.

You could also edit your EnglishStrings.txt file and just copy over the line that has the Scene browser inline header id in it to make that string available.

- Michael

Hi Michael...

Is there any progress on the easy toolbar customization of MoI ? As I remember, you have a plan to make MoI User easily add button and re-layout toolbar etc..

Thanks :)

Getting closer. Where is the tabs coding/definitions?





Thanks for all the help. I will post/share the new UI when finished.

Hi Anis,

> Is there any progress on the easy toolbar
> customization of MoI ?

No, not yet - I'm still working on moving the UI to a new foundation first.

- Michael

Hi Nick,

> Getting closer. Where is the tabs coding/definitions?

Those tabs (like "Construct", "Draw curve", etc...) are defined in SidePane.htm, they're made up of 2 sections, a <moi:PaletteHeader> for the top part with the tabs, you'll see some <moi:TabButton>s for each tab within the header, and then there is a <moi:PaletteBody> below the palette header, which contains the controls for each tab.

- Michael

I give up for now (I actually have work to do.) ;-) I can't get the scene browser to expand and show the additional tabs. I checked several files and compared line by line and could not find the difference. I'll have to play around some more later. Maybe it would be easier to add the custom parts to the V2 files...

Thanks for the help,
Nick

"""""Maybe it would be easier to add the custom parts to the V2 files...""""""""""

This would be the way to go......

Hi, im customizing my UI but i couldn't do a couple of things: 1. Change the text color, normal and highlighted, and 2. change the color of the division bars of the viewports when in split view, i would appreciate any help... thanks in advance!

Maybe you must wait the V3?
Maybe some new facilities for customize your UI?

Hi ed,

> 1. Change the text color, normal and highlighted

The text color comes from the color: attribute in moi.css - at the top of moi.css there are some classes defined for the body elements of different UI pieces, they look like this:

.CommandBarBody
{
	margin:0px;
	color:#000000;
	background-color:#D2DFE1;
	white-space:nowrap;
}

The part that defines the text color is the color:#000000; line in there. If you change that to color:#FFFFFF; for example that would make the bottom command bar text to be white instead of black.

You can also use rgb notation for setting the color which you may find easier than the hex notation - rgb notation goes like this color:rgb(255,0,0);
the rgb notation has 3 command separated values for red, green, blue, with each one ranging from 0 to 255. More info on CSS color notation here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Web_colors

So update the color: attribute in all of those classes at the top of moi.css, like .CommandBarBody, .SidePaneBody, .MenuBody, etc... to set the text color.


re: highlighted - that depends on what particular kind of highlight you're talking about. Do you mean for selected text in a text input, or some controls also set their color attribute on mouseover, to change that go to the CSS for the particular control and there will be a color property listed under mouseover: that can be changed.


> 2. change the color of the division bars of the viewports when
> in split view, i would appreciate any help...

Some info on that part here:
http://moi3d.com/forum/index.php?webtag=MOI&msg=3597.2

- Michael

I find it interesting how many people want all of their software to look the same. This is not meant to be harsh, but black and gray are so generic.

Vive la difference!

=)

Hi, thanks for your help michael! here is what i came with. I decided to make it black because i feel its less tired for my eyes!

Hi Ed, I'm glad you were able to get it set up how you wanted!

I have some ideas for MoI v3 on how to make it easier to alter the colors - for example in MoI v3 much more of the appearance for controls is specified in the CSS with things like gradient fills, so that should make for less adjusting of images.

I'll also probably try to make some system where there are a couple of different themes that you can switch between.

- Michael

>I find it interesting how many people want all of their software to look the same. This is not meant to be harsh, but black and gray are so generic.

Generic yes, but easy on the eyes... absolutely! After many years of AutoCAD I can't stand looking at a white/light colored screen all day. Also a similar UI color scheme breeds a sort of familiarity. Fortunately, many things are configurable here and in other programs. To each his own. :-)

Actually, I find a darker system to be harsher on the eyes particularly if text becomes hard to read. Things like dark text on a dark background require much more effort to focus on.

A light background and dark text is just the most natural way to read text, it requires the least amount of focus.

But yes certainly different people have different preferences - that's why I want to have a couple of choices for the UI theme in the future. In MoI v3 moving to have more of the UI being based off of parameters instead of images should help with that.

- Michael

That easy way of customization sounds great, I spent a lot of time looking for what image made what and figuring out what drove the htmls color until i found the css (that shows how ignorant i am with programming), there should be instructions for doing that, or a button like the edit ini but edit css lol