DesktopX 2.4 Developer’s Guide
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2.5 Exporting Widgets, Objects and Themes
OK, you've learnt the basics of creating objects, but now you need to know how to export
Objects and Themes.
First thing to note quickly, is that though it's a great idea to save your work frequently, every
time you click OK or Apply on a dialog, the current work on the desktop will be saved and then
reloaded next time DesktopX is reloaded.
Saving a theme is quick and easy. In the DesktopX Settings dialog on the Theme tab, all you
need to do is click the 'Save As' button. You will then be prompted to specify and name for your
theme and choose where you want to save it. You can also specify some additional information
about your theme.
At various locations, you may see a 'Save' option along side the 'Save as...' option. This simply
saves details of your existing theme to the hard drive so if anything went wrong with your
machine, DesktopX would be able to restore to this position when reloaded.
Exporting objects and widgets is also really easy. To do this, the first thing to do is select the
object(s) you want to export.
You can do this on the screen by dragging a rectangle with your cursor. A selection area will be
highlighted and those objects selected will take on a 'blue tint'.
You can also do this by selecting the objects in the Object Navigator.
Once you've selected the objects you can right click one of the selected objects and Click
'Export…'.
Following this, you will have a range of options. On the left of the dialog, there is a choice of
exporting specifically the objects that you have selected or, also exporting and objects related to
these (by group or parent/child relationship).
You also have a choice in how you export the file. The first is the most common option. Use this
to create a “.dxpack” file which is a standard object pack that can be loaded by DesktopX users.
The second export type is as a “Widget”, which I introduced you too in the User’s Guide. A
widget is a standard executable file that you can run on your computer alongside DesktopX, or
even without running DesktopX. You can share this widget with others, but you should be aware
that the widget will only run on computers which have DesktopX installed.
After specifying one of these two options, all you do is specify a name and location for the
exported file and then it is saved.
