DesktopX 2.4 Developer’s Guide
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Page 17
3
Enhancing Objects
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3.1 Object Appearance & States
OK, well done, you've conquered the basics. Now let’s start making the objects look cool!
There's no getting away from it - this section is a big one in which you will learn a lot!
Don't worry though, you can take it bit by bit, and after this section you will be well armed to
create some visually stunning objects.
States
First of all you need to understand what 'states' are. DesktopX does not restrict you to having one
way that an object can appear. Under different circumstances the object can have a different
appearance. Each different appearance is referred to as a 'state'.
The default state is 'Mouse away' which is how the object looks when the cursor is not over the
object. Unless you create any other states, this is how an object will look at all times.
First we will go over the basics of what you can define in a 'state' and then we will return to
looking at the creation of additional states.
Image objects
Below the list of states you will notice a series of tabs. The tab shown by default is 'Appearance'
so that is where we will start.
An object can fundamentally have two different types of 'Appearance', either 'Image' or 'Text'.
If you want a graphical object, you can choose an image already in the theme by selecting it from
the drop-down list, or you can ‘Browse’ to find a new image on your computer. Images of
various types are supported (BMP, ICO, PNG, TGA and JPG).
When you save images they are saved as rectangular images, but obviously you don't want to be
restricted to having rectangular objects. Both PNG and TGA images allow you to include
