Author Topic: Rotate entire Main Screen  (Read 3125 times)

amcq10

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Posts: 14
    • View Profile
Rotate entire Main Screen
« on: June 12, 2007, 02:13:24 PM »
I will soon be designing an LCD Layout that needs to be read from opposite ends.
I've thought of a fiew ways to do this.  First started with the "Rotate 90 degrees" option, but, this only allows for the rotating in one direction(clockwise), but not counter-clockwise.

The high-level layout of the screen could be something such as
where the left side is rotated 90 degrees clockwise, and the right side is rotated 90 degrees counterclockwise.
+----------------------+
|             |             |
|             |             |
|             |             |
|             |             |
+----------------------+

If this is not possible, then what about rotating the entire Main screen by 90 degree increments.
I would be happy with just 2 rotations (0 and 180 degrees)... but even more happy if it could be rotated to face each side of the LCD edge in for about 5 seconds each.

I've thought about using the video card/OS built-in options to rotate the screen.. but each of these takes about 4 seconds for the screen to go black, then re-appear in the opposite orientation.
I'd prefer a method of rotating that would have almost no lag between rotations.


Any quick ideas to implement this given the current 2.2.2 version? or will this take a feature request in a future load?



Corey Cooper

  • Administrator
  • Hero Member
  • *****
  • Posts: 6216
    • View Profile
Re: Rotate entire Main Screen
« Reply #1 on: June 12, 2007, 06:24:06 PM »
When the TD was first created, there really weren't any options except for rotating text, and only for the case of languages reading left-to-right, top-to-bottom, versus languages reading top-to-bottom, right-to-left... or something to that effect.  Basically, it allowed you to rotate text 90 degrees.

Now you can use Internet Explorer filters, and they work on text and images.  Try this:  In your main, outer column or row, double-click to get the Row/Column Properties.  Press the HTML Styles button.  Create a new style called "filter".  Set the value to: progid:DXImageTransform.Microsoft.BasicImage(rotation=1).  This will rotate the entire screen 90 degrees.  Change the rotation value to 2 for 180 degrees, or 3 for 270 degrees.

This may have some side effects.  When I tried it with the default layout, the center column of cells suddenly had no background color.  Actually, it appears that they somehow inherited the "transparent" background color of the center column, although they did have background colors set.  I fixed this by simply setting the screen background color.  That might not work for you, or you might experience other side effects.

amcq10

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Posts: 14
    • View Profile
Re: Rotate entire Main Screen
« Reply #2 on: June 18, 2007, 01:24:41 AM »
Thanks Corey for that tip. I had glanced through some search results about Filters, but had never used them, so, didn't really know how to set it up.  Now this gives me a great start.
I was able to rotate the entire screen 180 without any side-effects visible on-screen. (i guess because I don't have any background colors on the cells or rows/columns.. it's all transparent on my layout).

However, after rotating the screen, I realized that this suggestion is something that would have to be manually changed to be able to continually rotate the screen on a time-delayed basis.

So, I think I've found a happy-medium with your suggestion and not having to continually rotate the entire screen.
I now have 2 clock cells on my screen, one with normal settings, and the other with the rotate filter applied.
The new layout can be seen in the below attachment.

Now that I'm aware of how to rotate parts of the screen independently from other parts, I can think about it further and possibly come up with an even better design than below.
(In a few days I'll post a link explaining why the need for all of this rotating and half-screen upside-down tricks).

But thanks again for your help.

lukechris

  • Newbie
  • *
  • Posts: 33
    • View Profile
Re: Rotate entire Main Screen
« Reply #3 on: November 04, 2007, 06:38:02 AM »
THIS CAN BE DONE[/size]

ALL YOU NEED TO DO IS TO HOLD DOWN THE KEYS CTRL+ALT+DIRECTIONAL KEY (NOT TO GET BACK TO NORMAL HOLD CTRL+ALT+UP
Luke, 2007