# The Custom Panel Editor

The Custom Panel Editor is used to design custom layouts of fields. You enter the Custom Panel Editor by right clicking on any editing panel preset button and choosing the Edit Custom Panels... menu item.

You choose which panel you want to configure via the popup button at the upper right corner of the editor window. You can modify all custom panels before you save your changes if you wish.

The editor allows you to name a custom panel, supply a tooltip for the panel and to layout controls in a 12 row by 2 column grid. Unoccupied grid elements are displayed in yellow, occupied in white and selected in cyan.

With the exception of Action Buttons, components represent a field, property, or some other collection of metadata. Action Buttons, as the name implies launch an action when pressed. Tip: You can provide a tooltip for an action button by placing a Comment statement anywhere in the action which begins with Tooltip: (case insensitive). All text following the Tooltip: header will be assigned as the button's tooltip.

To assign a component to a grid element, right click on an unoccupied grid element to receive the upper left of the control. A popup menu will list the available components.

Only six component types can occur more than once on a given panel: Action Buttons, UDTIs, UDURLs, UFIDs, Comments (named) and File Properties. Comments (named) are comments with a description field (not the default comment which appears on the Info Panel). When assigning one of these components, you will be prompted for the name of the field. This name is the display name as it appears on the associated multi item edit panel. When appropriate, a picker will be available to make it easier to specify common items. The following table describes the fields, the prefix used to differentiate the name in the Custom Panel and the edit panel on which the items are typically displayed. Note that the prefix will not be displayed on the actual custom panel.

> Field | Prefix | Edit Panel
> --- | --- | ---
> Action Buttons | • (A) |
> User Defined Text Item | • (U) | UD Text
> User Defined URL | • (L) | UD URLS
> Unique File Identifier | • (F) | UFIDs
> Comment | • (C) | Comments
> Property | • (P) | Audio

Every component has a minimum number of rows and will be created with the minimum number required. Components which can be resized vertically can use the Expand Up and Down buttons to grow the area occupied by the component.

Initially an assigned control will occupy a left or right grid element. For components which can be resized, the Expand Left and Right buttons can be used to increase the area occupied by the component.

Components can be moved by the Move Up, Down, Left and Right buttons. Additionally a component can be moved by by dragging the field and pointing to the new position for the the upper left hand corner of the field. If the Shift key is down when the drag terminates you are pointing to the new position for the lower left hand corner of the field.

The Shrink buttons can be used to reduce the size of components.

Certain components appear cropped and by default do not occupy a full half of the panel. This includes components such as Track/Track Count, Disc/Disc Count, Year, etc. Components adjacent to cropped components will automatically horizontally expand to use the additional space. This is much like the default layout on the Info panel. If you disable the cropped option, the component will expand to fill a full single grid element. The cropped state, regardless of its setting, is ignored when a component occupies more than one row or column.

If a component has a Resize vertically option, you can elect to have the component resized when the main window is resized. Extra vertical space is divided equally between all resizable components. Components marked as vertically resizable will be resized when rendered unless they are adjacent to another resizable component which does not have the same first grid row or has a different number of initial grid rows.

When adding Custom fields (Custom 0...Custom 9) they will be rendered depending on the assigned number of rows. A single line Custom field will be rendered much the same as the Title field. A multi line Custom field will be rendered much the same as the Comments field. The name displayed for a Custom field can be assigned in Preferences-File List

The 12 row by 2 column grid is based on the minimum window size allowed in the main window. If you want additional grid rows simply resize the panel editor vertically. When saved the main window will be resized if necessary and the main window's minimum size will be the greater of the absolute minimum size and the largest size required by a custom panel. To reduce the number of grid components simply make the Custom Panel Editor window smaller. Depending on how much you reduce the size, components may be shrunk or eliminated entirely.

There are six artwork oriented components:

> Artwork Full
>   This is essentially a full featured artwork control. It will display multiple artwork items and is fully editable.
> Artwork Display
>   This is a read only view of the default artwork item. The control can be vertically resized but always occupies one or two full grid columns. ie. it cannot be cropped. The control displays the default artwork item if it is common for all selected files. Double clicking on the image will cause the Artwork panel to be displayed.
> Artwork Metadata
>   This is a read only display of the metadata associated with the default artwork item.
> Thumbnail (1)
>   This is identical to Artwork Display with the exception that it cannot be vertically resized but can be cropped. It occupies a single grid row.
> Thumbnail (2)
>   This is identical to Thumbnail (1) with the exception that it occupies two grid rows.
> Thumbnail (3)
>   This is identical to Thumbnail (1) with the exception that it occupies three grid rows.

The Display title field can be used to provide an alternate display title for a component. If you supply an alternate display title for the Rating field, remember that ??? will automatically be appended to the title when multiple values are represented. The dual item components Track Count, Disc Count and Movement have two labels each. Track, Disc, Movement and of. Both labels can be replaced by separating two labels with a / separator. Track and Disc cannot be replaced by an empty label while of can. If a / separator is not found, the of label will not be replaced.

User Defined Text Items can be forced to display contained items separated by the multi-value separator (;;;) one per line with the separators removed. The data is converted appropriately before being displayed and when written. To enable this, add a UDTI item to the panel and configure it to occupy more than one row. Assign the item a display name starting with a semi-colon (;). The semi-colon will not be displayed.

Action Button titles, (the actual action name or the supplied Display Title), are treated the same as names assigned to the default Action 1-5 toolbar buttons. You can implicitly specify a portion of the name to be used as a button label by enclosing the desired text in square brackets. While this really only makes sense on the actual action name, the logic is applied on a supplied Display Title as well.

The Import/Export button allows you to do the following:

- import the contents of a custom panel other than the one currently displayed. (Essentially copy a panel).
- import a custom panel previously exported to a file.
- export a custom panel to a file.