November 2, 2010

How to use a custom thumbnail image for a Widget

By default when you place a Widget stack into the Widgets folder PowerTools will create a snapshot image of the first group in the stack and use that as the thumbnail image in PowerTools’ Widgets display panel. But maybe you want to display a different image instead of the snapshot as a thumbnail. Here’s how to do that.

The first step is to load the Widget stack for editing.

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Open the Widget stack in the IDE.

Next you need to locate the image you want for a thumbnail.

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From the File menu select "Import as Control…" -> "Image File…" (Or press Ctrl+>).
Navigate to the image you want, then add it to the Widget stack.

Select the imported image

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Select the image and open it with the property editor

Edit the image you added

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Open the Property Inspector for the image.

If you name the image with the name of the stack + "Icon" DropTools will be able to use it as well.
Example: stack name = "BarChart", image name is "BarChart Icon"

Save the Widget stack

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The Widget stack will now use the image you selected instead of creating a thumbnail image of the group itself the next time you launch the IDE.

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