Using and Creating Clipbars
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The Clipbar is located below the standard Toolbar when in view and was added to NoteTab Pro and Std in version 4.8 (this feature is not available in NoteTab Light). It is a powerful tool allowing you to add your own clips and icons. The number of Clipbars you can have is only limited to your hard disk space. See our Web site for links to icons and also to download icons created by other NoteTab users. NoteTab currently provides five Clipbars: HTML-1, HTML-2, CSS1, TopStyle, and Utilities. You can open these by choosing the Clipbar command under the View menu.

Tip: if you use the HTML-1 and HTML-2 Clipbars, the "Bold" and the "Italic" buttons can be configured to either insert the typical <B> and <I> tags respectively, or the logical-style tags <STRONG> and <EM>. To toggle the style used, just hold down the Ctrl key when you click on either button. The last-used style is remembered even when you restart NoteTab.

The Clipbar acts a little differently from the clips in a Clipbook Library. Instead of NoteTab reading the clip in the actual opened Library, it reads it from the disk file. For that reason, if you edit a clip, you must save it before it will work on the Clipbar. The Clipbar's information (Library, clip, and button) is stored in a .ctb file. There will be one of those files made for every Clipbar made. They are found in the Libraries folder.

There are features on the Clipbar's content menu. To see them, right click over any part of the Clipbar. If an item is dulled, it means there is nothing for NoteTab to do with that particular feature. Notice the difference if you right click over a button and over a blank space out to the right. Also note the difference if you right click over a separator and a button in the first section of the menu. You can view the Tooltip by holding your mouse over the icons and also on the Status bar at the bottom of your screen.

The icons (also known as images, buttons, or glyphs) on the Clipbar must be either a .bmp or .ico format. The .bmp format is preferred because NoteTab has to change the format internally (not the file) in order to show it on the Clipbar. However, most users should not notice any difference in performance if .ico files are used.

Images are made of many very tiny squares called pixels. The transparency is read from the bottom left pixel of the image. That means whatever color that pixel is, the same color in the image will not be seen on the Clipbar. You may have noticed some images you see on computers are square like a photograph and have a background. That is because there is no transparency set which may be due to the file type. Think of transparent as invisible. The size of the icon should be no larger than 18 by 18 pixels for best results. NoteTab will shrink bigger icons to those dimensions; therefore, buttons that are not that size may get distorted. NoteTab's icons are available for you to use on the Clipbar. Other different icons must be kept in NoteTab's Library folder. The Clipbar uses the Toolbar's Options to determine whether the buttons are stacked or scroll out to the right when the bar becomes full.

You can reorganize icons in a Clipbar by holding down the Shift button and dragging the desired button with the mouse to a new location.


How to Add a Clip to the Clipbar

1. Choose the Library that contains the clip you want; make it active by pressing on the button at the bottom of your screen on the Libraries Bar.

2. Make sure you do not have "Single Click to Paste" checked in Options under the Clipbook tab. (View | Options | Clipbook).

3. Find the clip you want to add and left click once on it holding your mouse button down. Drag and drop it to the Clipbar by moving your mouse up to the Clipbar and dropping (let go of the button) the clip on it.


How to Change an Icon on the Clipbar

1. Right click over the icon you what to change and choose "Button Properties..."

2. The clip's Button Properties dialog will come up. You may choose one of NoteTab's buttons on the first tab (Toolbar icons) or if you installed your own in the Libraries folder they will be on the second tab (Custom icons).

3. Click on the button you want to use and then click OK.

4. Right click over the Clipbar and choose "Save Clipbar."

Note: If you change the name of the clip in Button Properties you must also change it in the Library as well. It is not done automatically for you. The same goes for the Library name.


Tips

You may consider having separate Libraries for each Clipbar you make so it will be easier to keep track of them all.

Some users might find it easier to edit the .ctb file for the Clipbar by right clicking over the Clipbar and choosing "Edit Clipbar". The format is:

"Library Name","Clip Name","Icon Name (or NoteTab icon number)"