Also new in groov 2... two gadget improvements 4 you!

Hello all you groovers out there,

When it comes to groov 2.0, of course we were most excited about how groov can now communicate to / mobilize / play well with others … like just about any PLC or Modbus device you may have. In no time you can be developing your own mobile apps to control the world!!! (Okay, I got a little TOO excited there.)

In any case, besides that BIG 2.0 feature, there are a couple of other little improvements in 2.0 you might’ve overlooked there in the Gadget Palette. This first one I wasn’t as excited about as Ben, since I favor the “Group Header” gadget over the: “Line Header” or “Divider” lines, but Ben was very excited so I’ll mention this one first:

“Divider” gadget now has a Vertical option.


In groov 1.0, only the Range Indicator had this option. I can neither confirm nor deny any rumors of upcoming changes to other gadgets which may or may not have a Vertical option in the future, especially gadgets that currently have the name “Horizontal” in them. But I would stay tuned and make sure you’re subscribed to this forum and OptoNews just in case.

New “Value” gadget.



I like this one a lot, because it’s quick and easy and might even help make our “5 minutes to mobile” get down to “3 minutes…”

I suspect that the “Text Area” gadget will become less as popular folks choose the “Value” gadget instead, because so often you just want to see a value on your page and you don’t want to worry about if or where you might need a pound sign or hash tag or tic-tac-toe symbol or whatever they’re calling this: # character these days.

By default, it gives you a “Medium” size and 2 decimal places which should be fine for most values you’d ever want to see, so all you have to do is change or delete the “Label” field, and make sure you’ve selected the tag/value to display.



So when/why would I ever bother with the “Text Area” gadget again? Here are a few reasons, do share if you think of others:

  1. When displaying a numeric variable, you’d like something other than 2 decimal places on your float, or want to add leading zeroes
  2. You want more choices on how the text is aligned, since the Text Area gives you Horizontal/Vertical options
  3. You’d like more control over your font size, e.g., you want a size that’s 20 or bigger
  4. You want something other than a black label (maybe you prefer red labels, for example)
  5. You want some text after your value, like a units label, maybe “pints” or “ounces”
  6. You don’t have a value or any text/label at all, you’re just using the pretty colored rectangles for decoration or as part of a really ugly snowman:


Have a groovin’ and Happy 2014!

-OptoMary

p.s. One other tricky thing you can do with the Text Area gadget (but not the Value gadget) is show a “space” or three without it getting collapsed down to just one space. Use an underscore in the string from the controller, set the “Vertical” alignment to “Top,” and then size that Text Area gadget so just the very bottom (where the underscore would be) is chopped off. Then I can put one or as many “spaces” as I want on the page. Below see Text Area gadget on top and Value gadget in the bottom right showing the same “OPTO_22” string.


p.p.s.
If you’d like to try this JEOPARDY!-like word game, see this post for the strategy:
http://www.opto22.com/community/showthread.php?t=648&p=2451#post2451