C-more Micro HMI Arrow Key Tab Index Setup from AutomationDirect

Pressing an arrow key on one of the optional keypad bezels will move the focus from one object on the screen to the next Ð for example, if I press the right arrow, this object now has the focus Ð if I press it again, the focus moves to this one, that one, that one, this one, and then finally back to the first one. The order in which that happens is normally controlled by the order in which the parts were placed on the screen. After moving parts around, though, that may not work Ð as you can see in this example where we went all over the screen every time we pressed the right arrow. The good news is: you have complete control over the order in which that happens. For example, it would be great if when we hit the right arrow, we tabbed from left to right, this first key, to the second key, to the third key, then the fourth key and the fifth key Ð instead of this random pattern we had a minute ago. LetÕs see how to do that. You can setup the arrow key indexing either in the navigation windows function tab under tab index, or, under Setup, Tab Index On this screen, you can see the current Tab Index. HereÕs number 1, 2, 3, 4, and over to 5 just like we saw in the demo. To change it, just click on the object you want to change and edit it here. So for example, we want this to be the first object we tab to so weÕll change him to a 1. So I changed that 5 to a 1. HeÕs #2. And we want this guy whose is currently #4 to be 3. So I just hit the 3 and that turned this guy to a 4 and that guy to a 5. Normally that would be ok if we arrow from 1 to 2 to 3 to 4 to 5. Ð but it would be nice of the up/down arrows could take us down to the next row. WeÕll thereÕs a trick for that. The Up/Down arrow keys increment the index by 10, so if you number the lower row with an offset of 10, the up/down arrows keys will move the cursor up/down a row. Let do that. LetÕs make this guy Ð 1 plus 10 would be an 11 Ð and lets make this guy a 13. A few notes: 1. If you have a background screen with objects on it, those objects would be listed here and you can specify a tab order for them too! 2. Tab order is per screen. If we go to screen 2, we can setup another tab order for this screen. LetÕs do that real quick: If we bring up our TAB index, we can see that things are all messed up here. So letÕs make this TAB 1, 2, 3, and we want this guy to be 10 more than the one above it, so that makes him an 11. And we should be good to go. LetÕs try it and see how we did. If everything worked the way we expected, when we hit the right arrow, this guy should get the focus, and he does. The guy to the right of him, the guy to the right of him, next row, like that. Now the up/down arrows should take me up a row, down a row and likewise. Ok, that screen looks good, letÕs head over to screen two. The first object should be the upper left. And it is. Move to the right, and down a row, and the up and down arrows work exactly as planned. So now all of our objects on all of our screens move in a very natural order as the user hits the arrow keys. ThatÕs all there is to setting up arrow key indexing Ð be sure to check out the other videos in this series. And as always, please send us any topics you would like to see covered Ð or - any other comments for that matter Ð we appreciate the feedback!