Description

Windows are the top-level unit of design for Vision projects. Learn the basics of how a window is constructed.

Video recorded using: Ignition 7.7

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[00:00] When it comes to building an Ignition project the first things you need to become familiar with are vision windows. Basically an Ignition project is merely a collection of vision windows coupled with a navigation scheme by which you move from window to window. We'll discuss both these things in detail throughout this course. First of all, windows have names. When you create a window, it's given a default name like "Main Window". You can rename this by right-clicking on your window and choosing "Rename" from the "Menu" dropdown or by pressing "F2". Your window must have a unique name among the windows residing in the same folder. You can create folders to organize your windows and it's actually strongly recommended to spend some time thinking about and planning the folder hierarchy that you will store your project windows. Planning your folder structure ahead of time will make your life a lot easier as your project grows and starts consisting of more and more windows. Windows are identified by their full path, not just their name. The full path of a window starts with a root folder. List each sub-folder you must drill into to reach your window and then ends with the window name. An example of this would be here, my "Test Window". It starts the root folder would be "Vision Windows". "Main windows" is the next folder I have to drill into, and my "Test Window" resides within "Main windows". So, my full path to my window here would be "Vision Windows" slash "Main windows" slash "Test Window". This is an important thing to remember because once you start setting up your own custom navigation schemes if you decide to reorganize your windows afterwards, all your references to your windows all no longer be valid, and you'll have to go back and re-reference where necessary. You'll save yourself a lot of heartache by spending a little time to plan ahead. Now, if we're creating a window here, by right-clicking, same main window, you'll see that this is automatically created with one component called "Root Container". Every window you create has a root container, and this cannot be deleted like other components you add to your window. You can add and nest other container components into the root container, but the root container is always the base container on your window. Lastly, let's examine the title bar and border properties. All your windows, no matter what type, will have these properties, however it doesn't always make sense to show a title bar on your windows. My test window, if we drill back down here, was created as a main window, meaning it's supposed to be maximized and full-screen. So you can see that by default the border and title bar display policy had been set to "When Not Maximized". This means when the window is maximized, and acting like a main window, it shouldn't have a title bar or border. Many times you'll want your pop-up windows to show a border and title bar. With these settings, since a pop-up isn't maximized, you would get a title bar and a border on your window. Hopefully now you have a better idea of what vision windows are and how they're identified within an Ignition project.

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