The Toolbars

The toolbar offers you a fast way to access commonly-used modes and actions. The main toolbar located above the main construction area. Actually, Cinderella.2 has two toolbars — there is a secondary one below the construction area.

Selecting toolbars

You can customize the toolbars you wish to see. To do so, either choose "Customize Toolbars" from the "File" menu, or right-click in an empty area in the toolbars area to access a context menu that allows you to invoke the "Choose toolbars"-dialog. The bottom toolbar can only be customized using the right-click context menu.

TODO: insert screenshot of final version of choose toolbars dialog

In this dialog there are two lists and two columns of buttons. The left list shows all available toolbars; the right list shows those that are displayed. The left column of buttons acts on the element selected in the left list, the right one accordingly on the selected element in the right list.

Classes of available toolbars

Cinerella has several classes of toolbars.

Built-in toolbars

These are built into the program. They cannot be deleted or changed and are displayed first in the left list. Some of them, however, may be duplicated — resulting in a user-defined toolbar that can then be customized.

User-defined toolbars

These are displayed second in the left list. These are toolbars you yourself created. They may be duplicated, edited or deleted using the left button column. They can also be edited, using the edit button — a new "Toolbar Editor" window will open when it is pressed.
User-defined toolbars are saved to your individual preferences and survive restarts.

Loaded toolbars

Below the user-defined-toolbars, those that have been loaded from a file are shown. These will disappear again when that file is closed. If you wish to retain one of these, duplicate it — creating a user-defined toolbar that is saved.

Arranging toolbars

To display a toolbar not currently in the right list, drag and drop it from the left list to the desired position. A toolbar may appear more than once, if desired. To no longer display a toolbar, select it in the right list and press the "Delete" button on the right side. To reorder the toolbars that do appear, drag and drop them into the desired order.

Using default toolbars

The three lower buttons in the right button column deal with the default toolbars. These are the toolbars that Cinderella.2 uses by default when a new file is created or a file without customized toolbars is loaded. "Set as Default" saves your current toolbar selection as default. "Restore default" loads the default toolbar selection, overriding those currently selected. "Restore factory defaults" restores the default Cinderella.2 setting, to give you a fresh start.

Customizing a toolbar


TODO: insert screenshot of final version of Toolbareditor dialog

In this dialog, a specific user-defined toolbar may be customized. Change its name in the top row. In the table, you can select the tools you wish the toolbar to contain. The drop-down menu implements a filter for only the most common tools (those the authors have deemed worthy of an icon) or all tools.
In the bottom area of the window, a preview of the toolbar is presented. Use drag-and-drop here to arrange the tools into the desired order.

Saving toolbars with a construction

Cinderella.2 can save the currently active toolbar along with the construction. To do so, you need to enable the option "Save toolbars into file" in the "file" tab of the Inspector. When that option is not active, Cinderella stores only the construction.
This feature is highly useful to create files with a non-confusing tool selection for beginning learners.



Page last modified on Friday 25 of November, 2005 [14:42:58 UTC].
The original document is available at http://doc.cinderella.de/tiki-index.php?page=Toolbars