Progress
AppBuilder
Developer’s Guide


Text Style Selector and Editor

The button shown here is available in the property sheet of most widgets. It also appears in the Column Editor dialog box for Data Browser widgets, where you can set the font for column labels separately.

AppBuilder provides a fonts table similar in principle to its color table. Rather than specify each change of typestyle–font, weight and slant, point size, and attributes such as underlining–on the fly, you define them in advance, with each definition occupying a slot in the fonts table. You then apply all characteristics at once by specifying a slot number.

As with the use of color, be sparing with font changes. Although at one time it was very common to use many sizes and styles of type in a single composition, today too many font changes can create an unfavorable impression on the user. Used carefully, special changes in the type can help focus the user's attention in a good way. Because of readability issues, fonts need to be selected with even more care than colors if they are to give the desired result.

Many companies use one or more particular fonts as part of their corporate identity program. If you are able to use those fonts too, without compromising readability, you might be able to gain a competitive advantage when marketing your software to such a company.

Typestyle selections apply to all text displayed in connection with a given widget. For example, you cannot choose one style for the column labels on a Browse widget and another style for the data it displays. Whatever style you select will be applied to both.


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