Arrange MLx Home | MLx menu | MLx buttons | Widgets | Index | What's New

For arranging images on the Macintosh screen. Holding the mouse down on this button shows a pop up menu with these items:

• Tile
• Sort Up
• Sort Down
• Montage
• Pop
•  
• Cascade All
• Cascade
•  
• Close Images
• Hide
• Unhide
•  
• Blank Screen
• Color

Hide and Unhide

Works on image windows, text windows and other windows. For temporarily hiding windows to clean up the work area.

Blank Screen

Makes a large blank text window that covers everything on the screen. This is useful for making a background . The menu bar will not be covered.

1. To close the window, use command-W, or the window-close menu.
2. Use the Windows menu or the W menu to bring specific images to the front.
3. Use the color menu to change its color.
   1. Make the blank window.
   2. Use the MLx - Buttons menu to bring the buttons to the front again.
   3. Invoke the color menu to change the color of the large blank window.
   4. Click on the background window -OR- option-click the title bar of the Button window to send it to the rear (make it disappear).
      1. If the background window is clicked, it will come to the front, just ahead of the button window.
      2. If the button window title bar is option-clicked, it will be pushed to the bottom.
      3. Note the order of the windows in the Windows menu.

Color

Changes background color for Fred (text) windows, including the large blank background window described above. The default color is of the text window just below the front text window - you can duplicate window colors this way.

Tile (example)

This item will display your images "tiled" across the screen. The images will be displayed, left to right, in the order listed in the dialog for selecting the images to be tiled. This order is the layer of the window, front window at the top of the list.

Note: this function is not very smart when it comes to handling images of different sizes. When using images of varying sizes, the tiling function may need some manual "help".

The number of images per row can be set using the shift key. Alternatively, zoom the images to a size so that just the right number fit in a row on the screen.

The tiling order can be set to alphabetical or reverse-alphabetical using the Sort Up or Sort Down menus.

Sort

Images are displayed in windows. In the usual Mac fashion, all of the windows have a layer assigned to them - front to back. The front window is the last one clicked. This layering affects ALL of the mac windows. The sorting here involves only the image windows. This affects the tiling order, which is also the order of image arrangement in the montage.

Sort Down: Z to A - left to right.

Sort Up: A to Z - left to right.

Makes a mosaic or montage -- a new image with all the selected images pasted into it using the tiling order, that is the order in which they are seen when using the arrange -> tile button.

Cascade

If you select this option, your images will be stacked on top of each other but in a staggered configuration allowing you to read all the titles of the images. (The titles may not be completely visible if the images are small. Zoom them to read the entire title.) Stacking saves a lot of screen space if you have several images.