When you draw objects in Moho, you will certainly want to control the appearance of
these objects, such as fill color, line width, etc. The Style palette is where all of
these values can be modified.
Overview
The style palette is a sub-window that automatically opens when you switch into
Fill mode for a vector layer in Moho. In other editing modes, the style palette will
automatically be hidden. The contents of the style palette update themselves
depending on the currently selected fill or outline in the working area. Creating new
fills and outlines is covered in the
Creating Fills
section of this manual, and is not covered in this chapter. Here we will discuss how to
use the controls to modify an existing fill, not how to create a new one.
Fill Styles
When a fill object is selected in the main window, the Fill controls appear in the Style
palette. The first thing you can do to modify a fill is change its color. Click the
fill color rectangle to pick a new color for the fill. A color picker dialog will appear.
Aside from the actual color of the fill, you can choose the level of transparency in the
color picker dialog.
Below the fill color box are two popup menus that allow you to choose one or two fill
effects to be applied. These effects include such things as color gradients, spots,
and shading effects. Just pick an effect from the menu to apply it to the fill. If you
choose two effects, they will be applied in order, one on top of the other. For example,
you could choose "Gradient" for the first effect and "Spots" for the second effect. The
result would be a color gradient for the background of the fill, with spots drawn on
top of it.
To the right of the fill effects are buttons that allow you to control the specifics of
the fill effect. If a fill effect has been chosen from the popup menu, these buttons will
bring up a dialog that looks something like this:
This is the dialog used to control the gradient effect. The angle control determines the
direction of the gradient. Below that are two controls for the colors at each end
of the gradient. Finally, a preview area: after modifying the other controls, this region
will display a small preview of the effect.
Outline Styles
The Outline controls are similar to the Fill controls described above. However, these
controls are used to set up the outline around an object. There's a slider for the line
width, a color box to set the line color, and a line effect popup menu. The line effects
are different from the fill effects, but work in a similar way: choose one from the menu
and modify it by clicking the button to the right.
Duplicating a Style
The right-most controls of the Style palette are two buttons: Copy and Paste. These buttons
are used to duplicate a fill or line style. When a shape is selected in the main Moho window,
click Copy to make a copy of its style settings. By selecting a different shape and clicking
Paste, you can duplicate the style settings onto the second shape. (You can also use the
Copy and Paste menu items in the Edit menu.)
Using Color Palettes
Finally, at the right end of the Style palette is a set of color swatches. You can use these
as a shortcut for selecting colors for your objects. Just click a color in this palette to
assign it to the selected shape. You can also click a line in this palette to set a line color
and width for the selected shape. The "Colors" popup menu lets you select from different sets
of color swatches. These color swatches are stored in a file called "default_palette.moho".
This is just an ordinary Moho file that you are welcome to modify to create your own custom
sets of color swatches.