Brass Plugins: Outlooker

Visual Setup

Outlooker visuals are configured pretty much the same as all other plugins. Double-click the Outlooker plugin entry in the Available Plugins list in the Brass main window. The following dialog appears:

New Items section

This section is pretty self-explanatory. Each checkbox controls whether an image (button, if you like) is shown for "New task", "New email" etc. The text fields next to each checkbox specify the file (PNG, JPG, GIF or BMP) containing the image to use.

When you click on these images, Outlooker pops a new window up for you. For example if you check the "New Email" checkbox the image in the file you specify will be loaded and displayed in the Outlooker panel. When you click the image, Outlooker will pop up a new email window for you. The same goes for tasks, contacts, appointments (calendar items) and notes.

The "Show Send/Receive button" option places an icon in the Outlooker panel that will immediately perform a Send/Receive EMail on all configured mail accounts when clicked. If new mail is downloaded and the "Show New Mail Recv'd" option is checked, the specified image is shown. You can alter the positions of all of these items by enabling Design Mode (discussed below) and dragging them to your preferred positions in the Outlooker panel.

 

Control section

The Right-Click radio button options

Most Brass plugins are set up to toggle whether the drag bar (the blue bar you click on to drag the display panel to a new position) is visible or not when you right click anywhere in the display panel. Outlooker has 2 options for right-click behaviour.

When you read the next section on Outlook data configuration you'll learn about the query dialog. For now all you need to know is that these radio buttons control the right-click behaviour.

Selecting the "Right click on a folder..." option tells Outlooker to only display the drag bar if you didn't right click on a folder (Outlook data feed).

Selecting the "Right click always toggles..." option completely disables right-click access to the query dialog, so that no matter where you right click the drag bar visibility will always be toggled.

Try it and see - you can't break anything!

Note: if you enable "Right click always toggles...", you can still access the Query Builder by clicking on the folder title.

 

The Left-Click option

"Left click on Outlooker opens Outlook" is fairly self-explanatory. When checked, if you click anywhere in the Outlooker panel that isn't a button or Outlook item, Outlooker will open the main Outlook window and pop it to the front of your desktop.

 

The Hotkey options

Outlooker can register a global hotkey for you. When you press your chosen hotkey combination, it will toggle the Outlooker display pane between being on top of all other windows or on the desktop. It's a handy way to quickly check what's going on in Outlook.

Simply check the "Enable global hotkey" box, select the key modifier combination from the dropdown and type the hotkey you want to use into the text field. When you OK the configuration dialog, pressing the combination you select anywhere in Windows will toggle the position of the Outlooker display pane.

If you select a key combination but nothing happens, or another application pops to the front this is because you've selected a hotkey that's already registered and in use. Either change the configuration of the application that owns the hotkey, or select a new hotkey in Outlooker.

Visuals section

These are the standard Brass plugin visual options.

"Transparent Background"	Checking this option removes any background bitmap or colour, making the text in the output panel appear directly on the desktop (or over the top of any windows you choose). When this option is checked, the background colour in the sample display panel is removed and set to standard Windows grey to signify no background is in use.
"Solid Background Colour"	When "Transparent Background" is not checked, this button shows the current background colour of the display panel. Click the button to change the colour. Remember that a background image may cover all or part of the display panel anyway.
"Transparent Window" (and slider)	Checking this option tells the plugin you want to change the transparency of the output panel. The slider controls the ratio of transparency. Sliding the slider thumb all the way to the right causes the output panel to be 100% solid, opaque colour. Sliding the thumb all the way to the left causes the output panel to be 100% transparent. Choose a position in the middle of the slider range to make the panel partially transparent and let the desktop and other windows show through. This is the option used to create the transparency effect in the screenshot at the top of this page.
"Bitmap in the background"	Check this option to display a bitmap in the background of the output panel. The bitmap can be of any size, but must be a JPG, GIF or BMP file.
"Background" field	Set the filename of the background bitmap here
"Stretch Background image"	Tick this option to automatically resize the background image to fit the display panel size. When unticked, the background image will be displayed at its real size.
"Highlight items under cursor"	When checked, Outlooker will highlight the Outlook item (email, task, note etc) currently under the mouse cursor. If you don't have a particularly fast computer this option may be a little slow for you - try it!

 

Display Panel section

These options are the same as those available through the tray menu (unregistered users can't access tray menu functions - register your copy of Brass to remove the limitations!).

"Enable 100% Configuration" is only available when the plugin is loaded and active. When checked the design mode for this plugin is enabled. It allows you to reposition, resize, change the font, colour and much more of all the visual elements. A detailed explanation for Outlooker is available here, and you can read about the Brass 100% Configuration System here.

"Show panel drag bar" toggles the visibility of the drag bar. This is the blue bar that appears at the top of the display panel - click and drag it to reposition the display panel on your screen.

"Show resize handle" toggles the resize handle of the display panel. This is the small rectangle in the bottom right of the display panel - click and drag it to resize the display panel.

The "Panel is" drop-down allows you to immediately set the position (z-order) of the Outlooker panel.

Configure Outlook button

Clicking this button takes you to the Outlooker data import system. You can only access the data import screen when Outlooker is loaded and active. This is necessary because Outlooker must maintain a connection to the Outlook data stores for configuration purposes.

You can read about the Outlooker Data Import here.

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