Contents

• This is what it looks like – Construction of the user interface
• Come together – Automatic sorting of the module-icons
• Module- and switch-icons
• Managed modules
• What else?

Index

Fundamentals about the extended user interface concept Many ideas are born from asking the correct question. In the case of CXmy (say: cee-ex-mju) this ran something like this: Can you not do something about modules with only a few icons that waste so much space? This referred to the Calamus Top row, which became fuller and therefore harder to use with each further module loaded. A module has to make an entry for itself in the Top row even if it only has a single function-icon, with a largely empty function panel hanging below it. Does it really have to be like this?

It turns out that the Calamus user interface is flexible enough for some extended concepts. CXmy represents one such extension and offers you, as a user, some interesting advantages:

• Several modules can save space by accommodating their icons in one and the same function panel. This avoids function panels that are mostly empty, and the Top row remains lucidly short. More functions can be reached with fewer mouse clicks.
• The arrangement of the icons may be altered at any time during use to suit your own preferences, and naturally saved as well.
• CXmy modules offer the possibility of installing animated or variable icons (whose appearance may depend on a switch position, for instance).
• You can work with a CXmy module in the same way as with a normal module. You do not have to make or learn any special settings or take any special steps. The CXmy modules find each other automatically.

A module needs to be prepared appropriately by its producer so that it can be activated as CXmy. Existing non-CXmys are excluded from this mechanism (although there is a technical possibility of subsequently providing an upgrade). The process is worth while mainly for modules with a small number of icons, which is symbolised by the letters my in their name (module texts use the Greek letter mu, which is the usual abbreviation for micro). The designation CXmy was derived from CXM (Calamus eXternal Module).

It remains to be mentioned that for loading CXmy modules no basic module or anything similar is required. It also makes no difference which CXmy you load first; the first module produces the entry in the Calamus Top row, all further modules simply join it. The CXmy modules are not necessarily connected functionally; the common property of all CXmy modules is only the way that they present their control elements to the user.