How Do I Use The Polygon Tracing Interface

How do I use the polygon tracing tool interface?

Panels

The content within most pages of polygon tracing tool are organized as a series of panels. An example of this are the six panels depicted in the following figure, which shows a view of the tool. These panels offer a simple method for delineating sets of related items, and enable the user to customize their view of the interface.

Drag and drop

Each of the panels that make up the interface can be dragged and dropped to different locations on the screen and interchanged with each other. This is accomplished by left-clicking the pin icon in the top right corner of each panel and dragging it around while continuing to hold the mouse button clicked. To place the panel in a new location, release the mouse when the panel has been moved to the desired location. This series of steps is shown in the next figure.

Minimize/Maximize

Each of the panels that constitute the interface can also be minimize by clicking on the minus symbol in the top left corner. This action collapses and hides the internal table within the selected panel, and the minus symbol is replaced with a plus symbol in the same location. Minimizing unused panels can release valuable screen real estate for users who are working with small monitors. To expand the full content of the panel back open again, the user should click on the plus symbol. These expanded and collapsed states are displayed in the next figure.

Panel visibility

Each of the panels of the interface can be turned on and off using the panel link at the top left of the content frame. Clicking this link would expand the menu shown in the next figure. Each of the panels can be turned on and off individually using the checkbox next to the name of each panel. When a panel has been turned off, it will no longer take up screen real estate and will again provide a benefit for users who are working with small monitors. In some cases, the content and/or tools provided by certain panels may never be utilized by a user, and can safely be closed to make room for panels which are more useful.

Lightboxes

The polygon tracing tool makes use of a design technique called a lightbox, which is where the background of the screen is darkened and disabled and a small portion of the foreground is lightened and made the only enabled portion of the browser window. These lightboxes are shown when an AJAX request is being made, thereby forcing the user to wait for the request to complete before continuing to work on the task they were doing.