I'm happy to see you find it useful, LJ!
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Here is a new set of buttons. As mentioned earlier, they are based on a 64-pixel dimension: 64px-by-128px rectangular buttons and 64px-by-64px square buttons. Version 3.2 is required to use these buttons.
The rectangular button design looks very similar to the existing FreeStyler buttons. However, instead of using black "Enttec keyboard" style buttons for the four "Custom" square buttons, I continued the "iPhone" style from the rectangular buttons. These square buttons no longer fit side-to-side next to each other like a keypad--they have a black margin like the rectangular ones. This was done quite frankly because I am not using an Enttec controller and had no need for the buttons to look that way. If there is any interest, I can recreate the buttons to appear like keypad buttons.
Before experimenting with these buttons,
make a Backup! These buttons are all slightly larger than FreeStyler's original buttons and so if you have an existing layout, it might not look good or even layout properly with these new button bitmaps.
Follow these steps to install:
1)
BACKUP FREESTYLER! Because touchscreen setup does not have a way to save or undo changes to your touchscreens, there is no way to get back your old screen other than a Restore.
2) Exit FreeStyler.
3) Navigate to the "
\Images" folder in your FreeStyler program folder.
4) Rename the "
Touch" subfolder to "
Touch - Original"
5) Download and unzip the attached file named "
Touch - iPhone.zip". It contains a folder named "Touch - iPhone" that contains the new button bitmaps.
6) Place this folder of bitmaps into FreeStyler's "\Images" folder, and rename it to "
Touch".
7) When you restart FreeStyler and have the touchscreen active, you will see the new buttons in place of the original buttons. The background will be a 32-by-32 pixel grid on a light blue background. These buttons are slightly bigger than the original FreeStyler buttons, so you will probably need to reposition them.
8) When you are done repositioning the new buttons, you won't need the gridlines anymore. Exit FreeStyler. Navigate to FreeStyler's "Touch" folder. Delete the file "
background.bmp". Duplicate the file "background - black.bmp", and rename it "
background.bmp". This is a simple 1024-by-768 bitmap that's solid black to match the button's background color.
9) Restart FreeStyler. A black background should be in place.
To undo these changes, you must use FreeStyler's Restore function.
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NOTES:
1) Even though FreeStyler has only four "Custom" buttons, there's a whole set of square buttons available in eleven color pairs.
2) Both the rectangular and square buttons have "ON" and "OFF" states that follow FreeStyler's default scheme: A button that is "OFF" is bright, and a button that is "ON" (or active) is dim.
I find this button behavior a bit odd--it should work the other way around whereby a button that is "OFF" is dark, and a button that is "ON" (or active) should be bright. But one problem with this is that in FreeStyler, most buttons are normally "OFF". So following this logic would mean a lot of dark buttons on your console--Not really exciting to look at or impressive to show any bystanders. So, instead of changing the button's Brightness, an alternative solution is to change its Color. Then instead of Bright/Dark states to indicate OFF/ON, we can use a ColorA/ColorB scheme to indicate button state.
To use the other square button colors for Custom buttons, or to change the button action from Bright/Dark to ColorA/ColorB, one has to understand how the button filenames corresponds the button names and its state (on or off) within FreeStyer. In the touchscreen window, a right-click on any button opens up a menu where the programmer/interface designer can select the buttons color and shape. Apparently (someone correct me if I'm wrong), it appears that the selection in the pop-up menu is "hard-wired" to the filenames in the "Touch" folder:
Code: Select all
Menu Name OFF state ON state
--------- ----------- ------------
Gray gray.bmp gray2.bmp
White white.bmp white2.bmp
Black black.bmp black2.bmp
Red red.bmp red2.bmp
Orange orange.bmp orange2.bmp
Yellow yellow.bmp yellow2.bmp
Green green.bmp green2.bmp
Blue blue.bmp blue2.bmp
Darkblue darkblue.bmp darkblue2.bmp
Pink pink.bmp pink2.bmp
Purple purple.bmp purple2.bmp
Custom1 custom11.bmp custom21.bmp
Custom2 custom12.bmp custom22.bmp
Custom3 custom13.bmp custom23.bmp
Custom4 custom14.bmp custom24.bmp
Thus, when one uses a right-click to make a button "Orange", FreeStyler reads the two files "orange.bmp" and "orange2.bmp" to draw the button in its OFF and ON states. To create FreeStyler's default button behavior, "orange.bmp" is bright orange and "orange2.bmp" is dark orange. So to get the button to behave where an "OFF" Orange button is dark and an "ON" button is bright, one has to swap the filenames for each file color pair. In the same fashion, to change the Custom button colors simply duplicate any of the "64x64" bitmaps and rename the new file to the corresponding button filename. Finally, to get buttons to have a ColorA/ColorB behavior, replace the "color2.bmp" file for any color with a button that has the color you want to represent the "ON" state.
3) These buttons were designed to replace the default FreeStyler touchscreen buttons with minimal changes to dimensions. Therefore, they share a weakness with the regular FreeStyler buttons: They may not be wide enough to display a long Sequence name. The Cue palette is able to display sequence names up to about 24 characters in length; These touchscreen buttons can only display about 18 characters before they bleed over the sides. I have another design in the works that have buttons about 180px wide. FreeStyler automatically centers the text on each bitmap, so a button with this width solves the problem without any changes to coding necessary.
4) An alternative to buttons that change brightness or color to indicate its state are buttons that change its shape. For example, buttons that look like a toggle switch or push button. I haven't given serious thought to trying this yet.
I have a screencap of my "Next Generation" FreeStyler touchscreen below. It's based on Star Trek's LCARS interface and has buttons that change color versus changing brightness. And yes, it works!!