Preview panel
This page is related to Elementi GUI.
Overview
The Preview panel is located on the top-left part of the Elementi GUI and allows to:
- Visualize the content (e.g., project, layout, playlist etc.) before publishing it on the player.
- Edit the position of layers within multi-layered documents (e.g., project's root index.svg file, layout, widgets etc.).
- Control the document playback by clicking on the playback bar
- before the playback indicator to jump to the start time of the document;
- after the playback indicator to jump to the end time of the document;
- on the playback indicator and dragging it, to jump to the desired position within the document playback time. Note that some documents (feed widgets, playlists) may not behave as expected when moving the playback control due to the execution of the scripts.
- Mute / Unmute the audio within Elementi.
- Play / Pause the playback of the currently opened document.
- Test interactive content by enabling the "touch screen mode" using the hand-like icon.
- Close the current document using the x-like icon in the preview toolbar. (The SpinetiX logo animation is loaded into the preview panel.)
Opening documents
To view a media in the preview panel, double-click on the media icon in the Browse panel.
To view the content of the current Project:
- Go to the root of the project, by clicking on the project name in the address bar on top of the browse panel.
- Double-click on the project's root index.svg file to open it.
To view the layers / playlist items of a layout / playlist / widget:
- Close the current document using the close icon
- Double-click on the layout / playlist icon in the Browse panel.
- The content of the layout / playlist folder is shown in the Browse panel and the layers or playlist items are displayed in the Edit panel.
- If the previous document was not closed, double-click on the layout / playlist master file (index.svg / playlist.svg)
When a media is opened, the title bar of the application will show the name of the edited media; a “Read only” indication may be added next to the media name, for instance when opening a widget from the "Widgets" tab as Elementi's original widgets cannot be modified.
Edit within layout
Sometimes, it is useful to edit a Playlist/Layout/Widget/Schedule within the enclosing layout. For instance, you might want to modify the properties of an RSS ticker set at the bottom of the layout, while seeing the changes in the context of the existing content.
For that, instead of opening the file from the Browse panel as described above, do the following:
- Open the enclosing layout.
- Double click on the media layer in the Edit panel. Or right-click on the media and select Edit.
- The following happens:
- The edit panel will be modified to display to configurable properties of the media.
- The edited selection will stay active, whereas the rest of the preview becomes inactive (grayed).
- The title bar of the application will show the name of the edited media.
- To go back to the edition of the original Layout, click on the Leave icon on the right of the main toolbar.
Edit widgets
Some widgets, like the data-driven widgets have a special edit mode. When opening a data-driven widget within Elementi, the actual content from the data feed is displayed. When modifying the data layout, the widget is switched into edit mode, during which the playback is paused and the actual content is replaced by the placeholder for edition text, if any, or the data placeholder otherwise. To edit a layer, click a second time on that field layer - the data placeholder (e.g., [[field]]) can now be edited.
To restart the normal view, press the play button.
Full screen preview
Any content created within Elementi can be visualized within the Preview panel - to view it over the entire screen, without any other GUI elements around, press the F12 keyboard key (or select "Fullscreen" option under Menu ▶ View in the toolbar).
- When enabling the fullscreen preview, the project is restarted and the interactive mode is turned on automatically - this way, you can test your interactive content.
- To exit full screen, press Escape (Esc) on the keyboard.
- The full screen preview is limited to 1 hour.