Vermont Energy Control Systems

Practical monitoring and control for the real world

Edit Mode

In earlier systems, the widget text file was maintained manually using a text editor, as described in previous sections of this document. Newer Vantage and Pro systems have tools that greatly simplify this process so that it's no longer necessary to directly manipulate the text file. Instead, widgets can easily be created, edited, moved, and deleted using the Custom GUI's Edit Mode. The video below provides a quick introduction to using Edit Mode.

Entering Edit Mode

Mouse over the lower right-hand corner of the GUI page, and a small gray button labeled "Edit" should appear. Click it, and a password popup will show up. Enter the Vesta web password and click "OK". If the correct password is submitted, the site will switch to Edit Mode. In Edit Mode, a small menu bar opens in the lower right hand corner of the screen.

If the 'Edit' button does not appear, then the system does not support Edit Mode. In many cases, a free update can easily add this capability. Contact us to see if your system can be upgraded.

Edit Mode Actions

In Edit Mode, it's easy to create, edit, move, and delete widgets from the GUI.

While in Edit Mode, there are three basic actions for editing widgets:

  • Left-click and drag any widget into a new location on the screen.
  • Left-click on any widget to select it, then use the arrow keys to move it.
  • Right-click any widget to open a popup window to edit widget parameters.

Using The Arrow Keys

Once a widget has been selected, the arrow keys will move it in one pixel increments. If you hold down the control key, the arrow keys will move it to even multiples of ten pixels. This makes it easy to align and evenly space widgets.

Using The Popup

In the popup, any widget parameter can be edited. This document contains a page for each widget type describing the available parameters and their effects.

There are three buttons at the bottom of the widget popup window:

  • "Close without Saving" closes the popup window, discarding any changes. Since only one popup can be open at a time, this button is useful to view the details of a widget without altering them.
  • "Save" saves the information currently entered into the popup, and also closes the popup window.
  • "Delete" permanently deletes the widget by removing all of its information from memory. There is no warning or option to reverse your decision once the delete button is clicked, so use it carefully. It also closes the popup window.

Saving Changes

In order to save changes made to widget positioning and to ensure changes made in widget popup windows are saved, be sure to hit the green "Save" button in the Edit Mode menu bar in the lower right hand corner of the screen before leaving or refreshing the page. Changes to widget position will not save until this button is pressed!

Viewing Changes

Changes entered into widget popups will not be apparent immediately. Once you have made your desired changes, you will need to save and refresh the page to see your changes. If changes do not show up after refreshing, you may need to manually refresh the widget text source file. Do this by replacing the ".html" in your address bar with ".txt", hitting enter, and refreshing the page. Once you return to your ".html" page, your changes should show up.

Exiting Edit Mode

To exit Edit Mode, click the "exit" button in the Edit Mode menu bar. The site will display normally, and you will be unable to reposition widgets or open widget popups until you reenter Edit Mode by clicking the "Edit" button.

The next few sections of this document will detail additional functions of Edit Mode.