Working With Buttons
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TPDesign4 Touch Panel Design Program
Creating New Buttons
There are several methods by which you can create a button in TPDesign4, but the most direct is by
either clicking the Button Draw Tool from the Button Selection/Draw toolbar or clicking Edit >
Button Draw Tool from the main menu, then placing you cursor within the boundaries of an open
Design View and holding down the left mouse button while dragging the mouse. You will see a
sizing rectangle as you drag the mouse, and this will allow you to create a button of any size that
will fit on the screen. To complete the button draw action, release the left mouse button.
To create a new button:
1. Open the Page or Popup page that the button will be added to (double-click on the page in the
Workspace Navigator (Pages tab) to open the page and bring it into edit focus).
 Buttons are always drawn in the Off State. The Button Selection/Draw toolbar allows you
to control certain new button creation properties for both the Off and the On state of a
button.
 To toggle between Off and On states, single-click the State button.
2. Select the Button Draw tool from the Button Selection/Draw toolbar. When the Button Draw
tool is selected, the Drawing toolbar becomes activated.
This toolbar is normally at the top of your screen and provides you with a mechanism for
controlling various elements of future button creation. This toolbar can either be free floating
or docked, but cannot be docked in a vertical fashion, as the drop down lists contained on the
toolbar do not support this type of docking. On the extreme left side of the toolbar, you will see
a button that will allow you to toggle the default choices for both the Off and the On state of a
button. You can control the button type, border family, font, font size, button fill color, border
color and text color.
3. Set the new button parameters. These settings will become the new default settings for all new
buttons, until they are changed.
4. With the Button Draw tool still selected, left-click inside the desired page (in the active Design
View window), and while holding the left mouse button down, drag to draw the button to the
desired size and shape (the minimum button size is 4 x 4 pixels).
 When using the Button Draw tool, hold down the SHIFT key while drawing to constrain
the item to a square.
 When using the Selection Tool, hold down the ALT key while clicking and dragging in a
Design View window to move the current selections without selecting anything new on
the mouse press (useful for moving popup pages whose entire area is filled with buttons).
 When using the Selection Tool, hold down the CTRL key while clicking and dragging to
force a "lasso" selection to occur (even if the mouse was clicked over a button or Popup
Page shown on the Page). Lasso selection forces you to draw a square around the outside
of the item to select it, as opposed to clicking on the item.
The maximum number of buttons per page / popup page = 500.
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