Text Zone

Text Zone is a specific zone that allows users to overlay transparent or opaque areas of text over content on screen. This is useful for things like menu boards and most especially useful when used in conjunction with DEUS. Please refer to DEUS technical documentation on how to create DEUS ke ys.

To add a text zone, open any existing or create new Campaign and go to What section. Click on the Zones Layout – Add Zone – Text Zone button from the left navigation menu or you can use the right click context menu to add text zone to a campaign.

Text zone opens up. The zone is called Zone (1). It has 25% coverage and 16:9 aspect ratio. By default, text zone background is set as transparent and opacity is set as max. Zone properties shows the zone position X and Y coordinates as well as Zone width and height percentage value.

When Text Zone is selected instead of the Zone Playlist is shown the text editor. At the top is shown text editing section with the following buttons: Offset top to clear gap, Numbered list, Bulleted list, Bold, Italic, Underline, Align Left, Center, Align Right, Justify, Font-type selector drop-down list, font-size selector field (manually enter the font size), Font Color, Background Color, Text Indent, Text Outdent, Insert a picture, Insert DEUS Key drop-down list, Insert random number generator and Insert Clock Key drop-down list.

Below the screen designer is drop down list with the list of zones on the left side and zooming tool on the right side. Below is the Properties section for the selected Zone. Here user can change manually values for Zone position by X and Y and Zone width and height in % by entering it manually from the keyboard in the appropriate fields. Below these fields is Lock button (checkbox) that will lock the position of the selected Zone Below are Zoom tool, Background Color, Background Color 2, Color Gradient, Opacity selector, Nudge tool and checkbox for changing the type of the regular text zone to Web based text zone. At the bottom is the Alignment tools section with following buttons: align-left, align-horizontal-center, align-right, align-top, align-vertical-center, align-bottom, same width, same height and same size.

Also multiple text zones can be added to the campaign. For each of the text zones user can select different properties (like Background Color, Color Gradient Style, Opacity, position, height , width etc.).

User can select individual Zones by clicking on them in the screen designer or by checking the Zone in the Zone selector drop-down list. When Zone is selected, borders of this zone will change its color to green, while the other text zones will have red borders color. Also, user can select multiple Zones at the same time by holding Ctrl button from the keyboard or by checking them in the Zone selector drop-down list below the screen designer.

The text zone can be removed like any other zone, by selecting it and click on Remove Zone from the Zones Layout from both navigation and right context menu. As an alternative user can also use the Delete button from the keyboard to perform this action.

New window will open to confirm delete operation, click Delete to delete selected text zone or Cancel to cancel Delete operation.

Once Text zone is added to Campaign What section, select the text zone. Text editor is shown instead of the Playlist section. You can insert text, image, chart, graph etc. in the text editor. The text editor has the basic functionalities for editing text similar to other text editors (like Microsoft Word for example).

Using the first two buttons from the text editor user can create numbered or bulleted list. Just select the text and click on the appropriate button (in the picture below bulleted list is created from the selected text):

To make the selected text bold, italic or underline user should select the text and click on the appropriate button. To change the font size user can click on the font size field or he can enter the value by right clicking on the selected text. User can also change the color of the selected text and the color of the text background by clicking on the Font Color and Background Color buttons. Color picker will be shown where user can select the desired color. Next to these buttons are the Text Indent and Text Outdent options. Next to these options is the Insert a picture button. User can use this button to insert a picture into the text zone.

At the end are two drop-down list Insert DEUS Key and Insert Clock Key. These buttons can be used for inserting existing DEUS Keys into the text Zone and also for inserting Clock keys.

To change the regular text Zone into web based simply click (select) the Zone and check the ‘Web based text zone’ checkbox below the screen designer in the Properties section.

In the modal window, warning message will be shown informing the user that after performing this operation all content inside the selected text zone will be reset. Click on the Change button to complete the operation.

After that checkbox ‘Web based text zone’ is shown as checked and the text editor is reset (all previous settings and text are lost). In the editor is now shown additional button ‘Table’.

To insert a table in the web based zone, click on the button Table in the text editor and select the desired number of rows and columns. After table format is selected automatically, the table will be inserted in the text editor. There are additional options in the right context menu when user clicks over the table: Table width, Table border, Auto Table, Cell width, Cell height, Merge Selected and Split Selected Cells. If the user performs right click outside the Table borders, he can change the Font size in the text editor.

To add a DEUS key to a text zone, you must first have that key created in the DEUS, and have it available to the channel you are publishing the campaign too. If everything is in order, the drop down menu next to the paragraph indentation buttons will display all the valid DEUS keys you can add.

You can create dynamic menu board using text zone and DEUS key system.

The following screenshots show how the entire canvas can be subdivided into multiple text zones and with a single primary zone. Since text zone cannot be a primary zone, you must have a normal zone in the zone layout as the primary zone. Half of the zones are then assigned image keys from DEUS that display the menu item, image while the other half are assigned text keys from DEUS that displays the price of the menu item.

The required image and price keys have already been created in the DEUS system.

Once Campaign is published, it plays on the player (see the partial screenshot of the CM Player screen). You can therefore dynamically change the menu image and associated menu name and price from the DEUS system.