Text and Table Widgets

Text Widget

We have already looked at the text widget, however there are additional options available for the text slide. You can add an image to the slide as a background to the text. Hitting the browse button will open a file dialog that will allow you to browse for any image type supported. Remember that the image and the text should be a different color so that the text can be properly seen. You can also select an image from the library of images that have already been added to the show by hitting the library hyperlink in the modal window.By doing this you are re-using a piece of content previously used in another slide.

This will then open up a new window that you can browse and select a prior image from. The image that you select will be adjusted to fill the entire panel background so any background color will be obscured.

You can also add a transition effect to the text from the drop down list. This can be any effect from the 16 available. The transition will ONLY affect the text and not the image in the background. You can and experiment with different transitions in the list.

There are two transition options for the text slide - transition in and transition out - these are the two animation effects that will play at the start and the end of the slide duration. There is also a text effects "shake' option that you can add too , that will provide some motion to the text to make it more eye catching.

Table Slide

A Table slide is one of the more complex and versatile slide types that you can add to your show and includes an extensive table editor as well as a CSV importing tool to generate the tables. The CSV importing tool makes it easy to import data from an Excel spreadsheet as an example.

When you select to create a Table you will be taken to a screen that will ask for the dimensions of the table in rows and columns.See image below:

Enter the dimensions as positive integers (or select to import from a CSV file) and then choose if you want to have a header (a single column, blank row at the top of the table) that will appear in the final table. If you have entered the values hit the "Create Table' button and you will be taken to the Create Table editor screen.

You will notice that the rows and columns are empty and ready for you to input data.To the right of the table is the properties list that will allow you to change the values of text settings such as: fonts, font sizes, font color, shading, justification and more.

To add values to the table you need to select the Edit button to the right of each row.

This will then change the mode of the cells to edit mode, where you can now put in any text or numbers or punctuation that you like into each cell. The "Edit" button switches from Edit to Save each time you click on it.

When you have finished inputting, you simply click on the Save button to the right of the row to save the values you have entered.Once you save the values the button changes back to Edit which will allow you to edit the values further, at any time.

This will then change the cells back to formatting mode so that you can now change colors, fonts, styles etc.

To make changes to the formatting of the cells, rows and columns of the table you can either select each cell you want to change by clicking on it (you will notice that the border of the cell changes to blue when you click on it) or you can use the check boxes at the top of each column or the left of each row, to select ALL the cells in that row or column.

In the example above the entire first column is selected and all cell borders have changed to blue. We can now go ahead and change the formatting of ALL cells in this column. In the example below we have changed the font, alignment, shading, bolding, and font size of all the cells.

When you are finished click Apply and then deselect the column using the radio button.You can also click on the Reset button to reset the formatting choices to their default values.

You can now follow the same procedure to set all the other formatting properties for the other cells, rows and columns.Once you are satisfied you can hit the Save Table button at the bottom of the screen to save all your changes. You will then be presented with the familiar Create Slide window where you will see all the HTML code for your table, as well as options for the width and height, the duration and schedule for the slide and the slide title option. You can also enter a top margin or space at the top of the table (the table will be centered horizontally automatically when you save but vertical centering you will need to do manually)

You can also enter a background color for the table or make any last minute changes to the HTML code for the table you have created.If you are not comfortable making a change to the HTML code, just leave it as is. You have the option to set a transition effect for the slide, enter left and top margin values, add an expiry date for the table content. You can also enable proof of play, and make the content only accessible to administrators as you see from the screen shot below.

Once you are satisfied with all the slide details you can hit the Save button at the bottom to save the new table in your Panel Playlist.