The ntzDisplay control is like no other. The Dot-Matrix and LED style characters can be set to practically any size. You can set as many "Regions" as you want, along with bargraphs. Each have an extensive set of properties that give you the freedom to create what you imagine. Each "Region" can have its own caption, text, colors, background and border, and various other properties, and can be animated individually or as a whole.
Each BarGraph can have from 1 to 100 channels, and can be vertical or horizontal. Plus there's a wide assortment of other options to help you get the look and feel you need. Each can also be Enabled, allowing the user to make adjustments by dragging the bars. This lets you design all kinds of interactive elements, from volume controls and faders, to graphic equalizers and much more.
Various BorderStyles and gradients add a special touch, and you can also use your own background images. The examples on this page were made using only the built-in properties. No skins or images were used!
The unique Dot-Matrix rendering engine supports both fixed and proportional spacing, as well as bold and multi-line text, word-wrapping, drop-shadow, Unicode, and more! Since the characters are rendered by the control itself, there's no font to register with the operating system. You can also create your own fonts using the included editor, which was designed specifically to generate Dot-Matrix character files for the control. You can make your fonts in nearly any size, and because Unicode is supported, you can make literally thousands of characters in one file. This is ideal when you need multi-lingual support that won't break your applications appearence. Fonts can be set at desing-time, in which case it gets compiled right into your exe, so there's no external font file needed. Fonts can also be loaded at run-time, and a typical font having 256 characters is only 1.3KB! The control actually comes with two internal fonts. One is the standard 5x8, and the other is an ultra small 5x6 - designed specifically for the Captions. Industry-standard displays are typically 5x7, which don't allow characters to have any portion below the baseline. This doesn't work well for such characters as lower-case g, y, and so forth. The Captions can also be rendered in your choice of system fonts, though the internal ones generally look more appropriate.
Text transition effects make this control even better - with effects such as fade, roll, wipe, and slide. You choose the direction and speed, and you can combine effects too! The built-in animation queue lets you "stack" multiple effects for a dazzling performance! |