Monitor Options: Styles (Dec 22, 2016)

Version: Deadline 8.0

INTRODUCTION

Today we'll be taking a closer look at the Styles settings under the Monitor Options panel. This will be the final part of our ongoing series on the Deadline Monitor Options (see Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3).

Craving for a different look? The Styles menu allows you to customize the color palette and fonts that appear on your Deadline Applications, so you can adjust it to suit your liking and even give it a more personal touch.

Let's start by first opening up the Deadline Monitor, then navigating to the Monitor Options panel from the main toolbar.

The Monitor Options can also be opened on Windows and Linux by clicking on the Tools menu and selecting Options. On Mac OS X, select DeadlineMonitor and then Preferences.

Now that we have the Monitor Options window, let's go ahead and click on Styles.

YOUR OWN LOOK

By default, the current style will be Default Style, which is the style shipped with Deadline and can't be modified in any way. To create your own customizable look, select the Create New Style button. This should prompt a pop up window where you can choose to name your new style.

Once you've finished naming your new style and hit the OK button, you'll now be able to customize the colors and fonts of your new style. Clicking on the name of your current style will give you a list of all the previously saved styles, allowing you to switch between and modify them.

Custom styles can also be deleted by clicking the Delete Style button while they are selected.

PRETTY FONTS AND COLORS

Let's say you're feeling a bit tired of the usual grey color of the Deadline Applications. It's high time to change things up a bit, maybe something to better suit your mood. Now that you've created and named your new style, let's get to customizing it with pretty fonts and colors.

First let's walk through the options available in the Style Colors section:

• General Palette - This color is used to generate the colors for the various controls and text in the Deadline applications. Note that dark palettes will result in light text, and light palettes will result in dark text.
• Selection - This is the color used to highlight selected items or text.
• The remaining options, such as Idle / Running / Unused, are used to color the text for jobs, tasks, workers, etc, based on their current state. For example, if you set the Failed / Stalled option to red, jobs that have failed or stalled will be in red.

In order to change these colors, you can either input the appropriate three numbers to specify the color you want, or you can click the [...] button, which will bring up a window wherein you can select the color of your liking on the color palette.

Can't seem to be getting the right color on the color palette? Simply click on Pick Screen Color and use your mouse to hover over and select that color anywhere on your Monitor. Once you've got that, don't forget to click on Add to Custom Colors to easily access this color for future use.

Now let's take a look at the Fonts section. There are two available settings to change:

• Primary Font - Use this to change the font used for almost all the text in the Deadline applications.
• Console Font - Use this to change the font used in console and log windows. By default, a monospace font is used for these windows.

Clicking on these buttons will open a window where you can select a font and size of your liking.

Don't forget that these changes, once saved with the OK button, will not come into effect until you've restarted your Monitor (or the other Deadline Applications). The Preview Style button, located beside the name of the current style, allows you to take a quick peek at what your customized style would look like, so go ahead and use that to gain a better idea of how the current style looks.

ONE LAST THING

Let's spread our style. Deadline also allows you to share styles by importing or exporting them. Files are saved as the type Deadline Monitor Style (.dmstyle), and can be saved or loaded by clicking on the appropriate buttons shown below.

Styles may also be saved and loaded using the View menu in the Monitor. Note that when saving styles, all of the custom styles are saved. When loading saved styles from the disk, the loaded styles will be appended to the list of styles currently present, overwriting any styles with a shared name. Be careful not to overwrite something accidentally!

WRAPPING UP

That's about it for the Styles page of the Monitor Options, which thus concludes our ongoing series on the Deadline Monitor Options. Hopefully this will give you more information, and perhaps even motivation, towards creating your own custom styles. Finally, here's an example of what the Monitor looks like after my customization: