Button Settings
Options > Button Settings...
 

Description:
   
    The Button Settings dialog (Options > Button Settings...) allows you to customize Silo's on-screen buttons. Buttons are arranged in a series of button pages. A "button page" is a set of buttons which is on-screen at a given time. You can cycle through multiple button pages, like turning pages in a book, using the Next Button Page command or by pressing the Tab key. If the buttons are set to be shown (Display > Show Buttons) then holding down the space bar will temporarily hide them; otherwise holding down the space bar will temporarily show the hidden buttons.  This allows you to work with a clean screen for most of the time, letting you hold down the space bar and tab through button pages when you need them.

    Each button page is composed of lists of buttons. There is a button list for the left, right, top, and bottom of each page, which will automatically arrange buttons you insert. There is also a custom list, which is a list of buttons for which you set your own positional values, allowing you to place buttons literally anywhere on the page. In addition, each button can be assigned any image for its up and down states. This setup offers a large amount of control over the look and functionality of Silo.

    The Button Settings Dialog is arranged in three horizontal sections. The section on the left refers to page-specific information and is where a new page can be created, pages can be renamed, reordered, or selected for editing. The middle section of the dialog refers to list-specific information, and allows you to edit the button lists for the button page selected on the left. Here you can choose between the five different lists, and insert buttons with associated functions into each of the lists. The section on the right refers to button-specific information, and allows you to edit the button selected in the button menu immediately to the left. Here you can assign an image to the button and edit the positional values of the buttons in the custom list.




Page Name:
    This field allows you to rename the currently selected button page.

Button Page:
    This list allows you to select and edit a button page. The Up and Down buttons directly beneath the list allow you to change the order of the button pages within Silo. The Remove button allows you to delete the currently selected button page, while Insert allows you to create a new button page and inserts it just before the current selection.

Relative To Manipulator
    If checked, this means that the button page will be positioned relative to the manipulator rather than relative to the window.  Thus, the buttons will follow your selection around the screen - this option basically allow syou to make a customized manipulator.  Note that these buttons only show when there's a selection.

Always Show
    If checked, this button page won't be in the regular rotation of buttons (for when you use the Tab key or Next/Previous Button Page commands) but will always show when the buttons are being displayed.  Use this option for button pages that you want to always have showing, no matter what the current button page is.
Button List:
    This drop-down menu allows you to select which list to edit for the current button page.

Button
    This list allows you to select and edit individual buttons in the current button list, on the current button page. The Up and Down buttons directly beneath the list allow you to change the order of the buttons on the list. The Remove button allows you to delete the currently selected button, while Insert allows you to add a new button just before the currently selected button. The new button will have the function selected in the Button To Insert list.

Button Image
    These buttons (Up Image and Down Image) will open a dialog which allows you to choose an image for the up or down state of the currently selected button. There is no formal limit on the size or shape of a button, except that if the image is larger than the window, it will not be displayed correctly. The image can be in any of Silo's available image formats - to take advantage of transparency effects (i.e. if you have a button image with an alpha channel) use the png format.  When you set the Up Image a new image for the down state will automatically be created.  Thus, if you want to set an image for the button's down state, you must first set the up image and then set the down image.

Button Percentages and Offset
    These fields are editable when you have the Custom list selected in the Button List menu.  The percentage value sets the percentage from left to right or from bottom to top of the screen that the button will position itself relative to, and the offset value will offset the button from that percentage point by the specified number of pixels.  If you wanted to create a bar of buttons that hovered in the middle of the screen (you would probably want to keep these hidden and hold down the space bar to use them), you could set each button's percentage field value to 50 (for both the x and y coordinates) and then space them apart from each other by giving them different offset values in their x offset fields.  The group of buttons would then move as a whole when you resized the window, but they would maintain their position relative to each other.
    This system may sound complicated at first, but it allows you to specify exactly how you want the buttons to move when you resize the window.


Notes:

- Some users may wish to create a blank button page which can be cycled to, avoiding the need to toggle display of button pages on and off.

- Button setups have their own format, *.sbl, to allow for easy finding and trading of different setups.  When trading setups, be sure to include the image files for the buttons in a folder with the .sbl file.