Something about UIBuilder I wish I'd known earlier

[Deathbane27]

Just in case anyone else didn't know... I just found out tonight by accident.

- Select an object, then click on the Preview pane, and use the arrow keys to move it pixel by pixel. Hold Shift while pressing the arrow keys to move 10 pixels at a time.

- Select multiple objects by holding the Shift key and clicking. (Control-click to deselect.) When you have multiple objects selected, you can move and resize them as a group. And, the buttons at the top of the Preview pane are enabled, allowing you to use extremely useful functions like Distribute Horizontally and Align Vertical Center. (Thanks Tonyis3l33t)


Edit: Adding more features you wish you'd known earlier:

- Doubleclick on an image or imageframe's SourceRect property to bring up a preview of the image given in SourceResource. You get the standard highlight box which you can move and stretch around to select part of the image! And you can zoom in up to 8x! Discovered by Kosmos (Bug with this: If the image is not a square, it will be stretched to a square in the preview window, but the selection box won't be.)

- You can double-click any property that takes Boolean values (true or false), and it will switch between the two. (AbsorbsInput, Visible, etc.)

- Double-click any Color, BackgroundColor, etc. value and it will bring up the Windows color picker.

[tonyis3l33t]

heres another
those hotkey buttons on top are useful

click object one, hold shift and click more objects

clicking one of the hotkeys up top (ie. align top) will do what it says based off the last object you click.
1
---- 2
------ 3
------

select 1,then 2, then 3, hit align top to get:



1 2 3
---- ------ ------

EDIT: stupid post doesnt show up how i typed it.
________
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[Deathbane27]

Originally Posted by tonyis3l33t

heres another
those hotkey buttons on top are useful

click object one, hold shift and click more objects

clicking one of the hotkeys up top (ie. align top) will do what it says based off the last object you click.

Holy Erollisi Marr's divine backside! That would have only saved me about AN HOUR OUT OF THE 80 MINUTES I SPENT ON MY INVENTORY AND BANK WINDOWS!!!!!

(Code tag is your friend. Why does it use Italics though?)

Now to redouble that hour lost by playing around with these.

[Kosmos]

I would really like to see this post consolodated for many people.
More for the Things I wish I had know earlier.
There have been so many of these discoveries with the UI Builder.
And perhaps we can get the information included in the updated UI Builder manual when they updated it a few years from now.

There is a built in .DDS viewer plugin with the UI Builder.
If you have a complete copy of your Defulat directory and you have the eq2ui.xml file loaded. Find the image ubject that you want to work with and double click on the zone rec command in the bottom left hand corner.
This will bring up the .DDS plug in and alow you to set your zone recs for the image It's really nifty and handy. I did't even know it was there.

- Always double click the command in the bottom left hand window. If it requires txt only it will pop-up the correct edit window for that command. If you change the text in the bottom left hand window for the wrong command, it will monkey everything up when you save the file.

[Deathbane27]

Alrighty, toss in anything else you discover or think other people might not know about, and I'll edit it in to the top post.

New:

You can double-click any property that takes Boolean values (true or false), and it will switch between the two.

Double-click any Color value and it will bring up the Windows color picker.

[Dolby]

Added a few to the FAQ so far.

[Drumstix42]

Note* For some of these things to work you have to click the Play/Stop button at the top. I was trying to use the arrow keys to move stuff and didn't work till I unpress that button

[Kosmos]

Yes! Good one.

I often forget about that when I've got the "Run" button. On/Off


Lol, Not the "Play" button.

[Azoz]

It's possible to copy and paste multiple objects through uibuilder. While you cannot select multiple items from the object list by any means, if you select multiple objects in the view window by using shift+click, you can copy by pressing ctrl-c. Now that the selection is in the clipboard you can paste all of those objects together with ctrl-v or edit->paste.

Also, it's not particularly hidden but I've found I like to change the default settings for new objects view->default properties then select your object and add a new property and default value for it. I find it really useful for text since it has no default font or shadow style normally.

Double click everything. Like the color selector and the truefalse toggle mentioned here, I also discovered that double clicking a dynamic data that is set to /gamedata.self.name (you must double click the text that says "dynamicdata" otherwise you will be editing the value) it will move take you to that variable, which also shows you ever other variable in the object. After you figure out what data you are after you can just hit back to go to the object you were editing.

Uh...thats all the fantastic stuff I've discovered about uibuilder that I can think of.

[Azoz]

When you select multiple objects, resizing one of them resizes all to match.

[Kosmos]

It would be nice if we could get a sticky on this, I always have trouble finding the post.

Problem: .DDS graphics show up in the UI Builder and everything thing looks beautiful, but once you go into the game, you get nothing but blanks where the images would be.


Solution: You have to use the .dds file extention on the file address line. If you just put /images/widgets01 it will work in UI Builder and look fine, but will not work in the game.

/images/widgets01.dds works in both the UI Builder and the game.

[Zonx]

Kosmos asked me to link this diatribe on the alignment buttons for inclusion in the FAQ.

[Zonx]

Multi-edit: Select multiple objects, edit ANY property and hit ENTER to set the same value for all selected objects. Note: even objects that don't normally use the edited property will recieve it.

Simply clicking out of the property edit area only changes the last selected object.

Multi-Select/Deselect: Multiple objects can be selected from both the object tree and the preview window by holding down shift. The last object selected displays its properties in the properties window. Selection order does mater for some operations like Distribute. Select order can be changed by reselecting already selected objects.

Objects in a multi-select can be deselected by holding down the contrl key. Deselecting can be a bit tricky. An object that has focus (it's properties are displayed in the properties window) can't be deselected. You must first give focus to another object by clicking it. Once that's done, Ctrl+Click will deselect it.

Double-click: Its not just for boleans any more! Double-click often cycles through avalable choices like align left,center,right.

Namespaces: Although UIBuilder doesn't provide an "Insert Namespace" command, you can copy/paste names spaces, empty the copy and rename it.

Styles: Renaming any style in UIBuilder updates all reference to that style. Styles that reference objects outside their namespace, copy/pasted to another area, preserve their references. Styles that reference objects within their namespace, copy/pasted to another area will look for objects in the new location.

Fonts: Fonts that contain FontCharacters often become corupted if edited in UIBuilder.

[ger]

Originally Posted by Zonx

Styles: Renaming any style in UIBuilder updates all reference to that style. Styles that reference objects outside their namespace, copy/pasted to another area, preserve their references. Styles that reference objects within their namespace, copy/pasted to another area will look for objects in the new location.

Amazingly, if you rename a style to match the name of another style, then rename the other same-named style, the elements linked to either style stay linked to the correct styles.

Why would you do that you might ask? You suddenly realize you've placed 16 elements using 16 different styles (HO Wheel anyone?) in the reverse order and it's easier to just rename the elements & styles than it is to reposition all of them. Starting at the end of the list and renaming (so that for a few minutes you have two style0s, two styles 1s, etc.) won't mess up the elements associated with the styles in the long run.

[Kosmos]

Thanks for taking to time to make that post Zonx!

[Goldi]

thank you! thank you!

This thread rocks, i was wondering about these things for a long time!