Property values give you precise control over an object's properties, and lets you set a property to an exact limit.
Entering Property Values with the Properties Window
One way you can manually enter a property value for a visible or invisible object or animation is with the Properties window, shown in the following figure. This window displays the object properties you can modify (read-only properties do not appear). Because the window is modeless, it stays on your screen as you change property values or select other objects to modify. This allows you to view properties as you make other changes to your picture.
To use the Properties window, enter property values in the window's right-hand column and press Enter. Some properties let you select a value from a list instead of entering it. In these cases, when you select the cell, a drop-down list box appears. To hide the Properties Window, right-click a cell in the window and select Hide from the pop-up menu.
Entering Property Values with the Advanced Animations Dialog Box
You can also change property values with the Advanced Animations dialog box. When you access the Advanced Animations dialog box, the selected object's properties are displayed. Only the properties that accept data appear in the dialog box; read-only properties do not appear. To display read-only properties, use the Visual Basic Editor. For more information on using the Visual Basic Editor, refer to the Writing Scripts manual.
The Advanced Animations dialog box groups similar properties together into categories. Each category is represented by a tab in the dialog box. Certain tabs appear only if the selected object has the associated properties. For example, the Text tab appears only for text objects; only text objects have font and font style properties.
Each tab displays the following information:
- The property name.
- The property value.
- Whether the property is being used in an animation.
The following table describes each Animation dialog box tab.
|
The tab... |
Allows you to configure... |
|
General |
The object's name, description, and behavior at run-time, as well as a help context ID. |
|
Visible |
Whether the object is visible. |
|
Size |
The height, the width, the percentage to resize the object by, the direction to resize the object in, and whether the object is uniformly resized. |
|
Misc |
The object's layer in a picture, as well as numerous properties specific to certain object types.. |
|
Position |
The vertical and horizontal position of the object. |
|
Color |
The foreground color, background color, and edge color of the object, as well as edge and grid properties specific to a chart object. |
|
Style |
The fill style, the edge style, and the line width, as well as properties specific to rounded rectangle, pipe, and chart objects. Not all objects have a fill style. Refer to the Coloring and Styling Objects section for more information. |
|
Rotate |
The angle of rotation of an object and the unit of measure for the angles. Ovals, rounded rectangles, and charts do not have rotation properties. |
|
Text |
The font size, the font style, the font name, and the text displayed by the object. Text properties apply only to text objects. |
|
Behavior |
The behavior of the object's sizing, scaling, alignment, and text properties. There are also properties specific to chart objects. |
|
Gradient |
The fade color, fade type, gradient angle and blend percentage to use for the gradient fill. Pipe objects do not have fade type and gradient angle properties. |
|
Fill |
The direction to fill the object, and the percentage to fill the object. |
|
Appearance |
The background and foreground colors , and the background style and caption of a button object. |
|
Picture |
The position of the picture. |
|
Variable |
The variable type, and the initial and current values of a variable object. |
For a complete list of properties that you can animate, and the objects the properties apply to, refer to Object Properties.
NOTE: When entering R, G, B values in the Advanced Animations dialog box, the values must be enclosed in parentheses.
For more detail on the Animations dialog box, refer to the Animating Object Properties chapter.
