1.2 Customizing the RPG GUI Designer

You can customize many of the VisualAge RPG GUI Designer components to suit your personal preferences. Let's customize the Project view and the Parts Palette window.

Customizing the Project View

First lets customize the Project view. Remember the Project view presents a view of the parts that make up your project. By default the Project view is a set of icons or in the form of a tree diagram.

Follow these steps:

  1. Choose View from the GUI Designer menu.
  2. Choose Icons. The Project View changes to display all design windows with their name. Now let's return to the tree view.
  3. Choose View from the GUI Designer Menu bar, then Tree > Icons and text.

    The Project View is refreshed, and plus signs(+) are displayed next to the window parts. A plus sign in a tree view indicates there are more items, or in the case of the GUI Designer, parts in the window.

  4. To display the additional parts, click on the + sign with the left mouse button to expand it. Another icon with the name CANxxxxxxx appears. This is the Canvas part of the window.
  5. Click on the + sign beside the CANxxxxxxx icons. When you create a part, the Canvas part will expand to show all the created parts on this window.
  6. You can also change the Project view by clicking with the right mouse button on the Project View. A pop-up menu is displayed from which you can choose a particular view.

Customizing the Parts Palette

You can customize the Parts Palette to contain only those parts that you use most often.

Follow these steps:

  1. Find the Group box part on the Parts Palette.
  2. Click the right mouse button while the mouse pointer is over the Group box part.
  3. Choose Remove.
  4. The Group box part is removed from the Parts Palette, not the GUI Designer. If you closed the GUI Designer, the Parts Palette will not contain the Group box part when you restart the GUI Designer. But how do you add the Group box part back again to the Parts Palette?

  5. Click on the left most icon on the tool bar at the bottom of the Parts Palette (next to Sticky). The Parts Catalog appears.
  6. Select the Frames tab. As you can see, the Group box part item is still present in the Parts Catalog.
  7. As the Group box part is an IBM supplied part, you cannot modify it, for example, change its name or icon, or delete it from the Parts Catalog. You can perform those actions on User-Defined parts and Imported parts only.

  8. Click the right mouse button while the mouse pointer is over the Group box part.
  9. Choose Add to palette.
  10. Click on the left most icon on the tool bar at the bottom of the Parts Palette (next to Sticky). The Parts Catalog appears with the Group box.

Click on to indicate that you've done all the steps.

This completes Exercise 1. You have been introduced to the GUI Designer and are familiar with some of its components such as the Parts Palette and Tool bar. You also know how to customize these components.

Now you are ready to create your first window of the Customer Inquiry application.

But before you do, we recommend you do the Quiz.