6. Panel :

Panel: it is featured by a red rectangle. It is an essential item in all Malted interactions except for Null, since any verify or check action is applied to the panel called Main that the exercise contains.

The panel may contain overlapping cards that are able to contain Containers and Media Objects. These cards can be linearly navigated by means of navigating arrows. The panel is useful to develop exercises that require several cards with the same structure, since any added cards will have the same structure and contents of the first one.

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1. Development:
in order to add a panel from the Frame Management, right click Add Panel in the work area

 2. Edit: double-click the panel or select it with the right button of your mouse (when selecting the panel, its red border turns into yellow); then click Edit from the menu. The Edit Panel window will open. In the upper boxes the user can key in a name for the current card and for the panel (by creating the panel, its first card is also automatically created). Below there are three thumbs from which one can set up the panel properties :

Background Image Thumb:
- Image File: The default panel image file is maltedbg.gif. This image can be swapped by any other included in the image folder of the project in which the user is working.
- Display Type: we can select from No Display/Center/Patch/Stretch as regards the background image .


Label Properties thumb:
From this thumb one can personalize the font outlook, its format, and background colour of all the media objects included in the panel. These properties can be separately modified in each media object and container if the same style is not wanted for all the media.


Auto Actions thumb:
It allows the user to apply an Action which will automatically run when showing each card within the panel. Once the Action is chosen, a value must be keyed into the field on the right of the dialogue box for those actions that require it. If in doubt about the syntax of a value, check it by selecting the same Action from the Content thumb in Edit Media Objects.

* This Action is applied by default to all the cards, so if we only want to apply it to certain cards, we will have to do so from inside the xml code by manually deleting the onShow labels from those cards


3. Working with several cards:

Demo Multimedia 4: "Multiple Choice template"
If the user is interested in developing an exercise with several cards, advantage of the cards uniformity can be taken:
a) Add a panel, call it Main and fill in the first card with the corresponding content (Containers and Media objects with their graphics, buttons, texts, etc).
b) Right click the panel and select Add a card (it is placed at the end) or Insert a card (it is placed in front of the current card). This will introduce a second card into the panel; this second card will be exactly as the first one as regards the layout of the containers and media objects but without the associated media files .
As many cards as needed can be added or inserted. It is not necessary to name the cards, since we can also call them by the position they have inside the panel. (1 will be the first card, then 2, etc.)


4. Panel Navigation bar:
when working with panel that have more than one card, it is necessary to insert navigation buttons so that the user can go from one card to the other. The most useful thing to do is to include these buttons in a container inside the first card before creating the following cards; in that way we will not have to repeat the process of inserting the buttons in each card, due to the uniformity structure of the cards explained above.

A basic navigation bar includes a container with three media objects: two buttons (previous and next) and a box that shows the current card :

view in Malted Editor:
preview in Malted Browser:

- Previous button is a transparent media object associated to an image file (left arrow); its action is previous and its value panel (Main)
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Next button is a transparent media object associated to an image file (right arrow); its action is next and its value panel (Main)
- The card number box is a transparent media object called Main.cardNumber

5. Verify and Clear panel cards buttons: the verify button is a media object with verify or check action
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Verify action marks the exercise, showing the right and wrong answers.
- Check action only shows the right solutions.

As a value for the actions, panel (Main) must be introduced, so as the marking to be applied to the panel called Main in which our exercise is included. Both actions also have parameters that can be modified from Frame>Properties in the Parameters thumb:
- Verify Parameter: anyTime/atEnd
Values: Verify anytime allows the user to verify the active card at any time whereas attend only verifies the cards once all the cards inside the panel have been answered.
- chekOnlyOne Parameter : yes/no
Values
: yes allows clicking only one answer as the right one whereas no allows clicking several answers within the same exercise .


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