The Home Screen

Purpose of the Home Screen

Below are two images of the same Home Screen: the first one is how it would look on a laptop / desktop in landscape orientation, and the second is how it would look on a phone or tablet in portrait orientation. The only real difference is the placement of the Icon Bar.

Every Home Screen has all of the user-defined pages at the top, followed by Edit Pages, Settings, and Exit SKipper.

Edit Pages

This is where you go to organize the Home Screen on each of your devices. (Pro tip: you can get to this screen with a right-click on any user-defined Page, or with a double-tap on any user-defined Page if you have it configured in Settings.)

From this screen, you can:

• Enable editing of the individual user-defined Pages (upper left corner)
• Add a new Page to your UI ("+" icon in upper right corner)
• See the icon for each Page
• See and edit the name of each Page
• See which Page is set to be the one that comes up automatically when SKipper starts each time (little blue house next to the icon)
• See which Pages are configured to display their icon on the Icon Bar (the little star next to the icon indicates the icon is visible on the Icon Bar)
• Change the order of the Pages on the Home Screen, which changes the order of their icons on the Icon Bar (the up / down arrow buttons at the right side of the name fields)
• Bring up a menu of other things you can do with each individual Page (image below) (little round settings-like icon at the far right of each Page)

Open Page

When you're at this point, if you want to see what the Page looks like, you can click this menu item. However, you would not normally come to this menu to open a Page - you would normally just click on its icon from any screen in SKipper.

Change Page Icon

This brings up the list of icons available in SKipper - there are a LOT! The image below shows just some of the categories, and each category has many icons. Spend a little time and you'll find just the right icon for each one of your Pages.

Note that you can use the same icon for more than one Page, which might be appropriate for two pages that serve the same purpose (like "Engine data - laptop" and "Engine data - phone"), but are used on different devices. By hiding the icon for the laptop version of the Page on your phone, and hiding the phone version of the Page on your laptop, each of your devices would have the same icon to see the same data. (See below for how to show and hide icons.)

Show Page on Startup

On each of your devices, you can select one of your Pages to be displayed whenever you open SKipper. When you do this for a Page, a little blue "house" icon will appear next to the icon you have selected for the Page.

Show Page Icon / Hide Page Icon

Remember that your UI includes all the Pages you've created for all of your devices, and you may not want to use them all on every device. For example, you won't want to use a Page that you designed for a 24" desktop screen, with 30 different Controls, when you're on your phone, so you would hide that Page's icon on the phone. By showing and hiding icons on each device, you will have one-click access to each Page you want to use on the device, and won't be bothered by icons you won't use.

Copy Page

This is used to copy a Page so that you can modify it for another use. Examples of this include:

• Copy a page with a very nice Layout that you want to use for a different collection of data. After you copy it, you would delete some or all of the Controls and replace them with different Controls showing different data, or you could simply change the binding to the Signal K Path for any control to change what it will display.
• Copy a Page that was created for one device, then modify it for use on another device. This won't work very well for devices with very different screens, but it will work very well for devices whose screens are very similar, but not so similar that you can use the same Page Layout for both of them.

Delete Page

Obvious... and dangerous! Of course, you'll get a warning before you complete this, because it can't be undone.

Settings

The other primary purpose of the Home Screen (besides the Edit Pages functions) is to configure all of the miscellaneous Settings. Below is a listing of them all, with explanations where necessary. (Pro tip: you can get to the Settings screen with a right-click on any user-defined Page, or with a double-tap if you have configured it to do so in Settings.)

Theme

Choose Default if you want SKipper's theme to always match the theme being used by Signal K. If you choose this, you must also enable the next option below. If you always want SKipper to use either the Light or the Dark theme, select the one you want. (Pro tip: you can change the theme with a right-click on any user-defined Page, or a double-tap on any user-defined Page if you have configured it, below.)

Use Current Signal K Theme for SKipper

Obvious. Used in conjunction with the previous setting.

Show Notifications from Signal K

If enabled, notifications from Signal K will appear in SKipper in a bright red box. Only notifications equal to or more serious than the next setting will be displayed.

Minimum Notification State to Show

If you enable the previous setting, select the minimum notification state here. Notifications are listed here in order of urgency, from "Nominal" to "Emergency".

Enable Editing of User Pages

Must be enabled in order for you to edit any Page's Layout or Controls. You can also enable / disable Page editing on the Edit Pages screen. On touch-screen devices, you can do it with a double-tap on any user-defined Page (if enabled below). On non-touch devices, you can do it with a right-click on any user-defined Page.

Double-tap on User Page Action

On touch-screen devices, you can double-tap on any user-defined Page to make this action happen. Choices are: - ToggleEditMode (to enable / disable user-defined Page editing) - ToggleTheme (between Light and Dark) - ShowUserMenu (This is the most useful choice: it brings up a menu with these choices: enable or disable editing of user-defined Pages; toggle theme; bring up the Edit Pages screen; bring up the Settings screen)

Run SKipper full-screen

Uses every bit of your screen for SKipper. This option is not visible on all devices.

Show Property Value Suggestions Based on Binding

When you bind a Signal K Path to a SKipper Control, there are certain things that can be assumed about how you will want to configure that Control. For example, what "unit" to use, such as "V" for any Path that is reporting voltage. This setting is enabled by default, and you will probably want to leave it enabled.

Controls Defaults

This allows you to change the default values for many aspects of each type of Control. See just one example in the image below. If you're creating your UI and you find yourself changing any of these things frequently, you might want to change their default values here.

Signal K Server

Brings up the following menu.

Load or Store UI on Signal K Server

Obvious.

Configure Default Units

Choose between Metric and Imperial.

Number of Decimal Places

This is the default for all digital numbers displayed by SKipper. Can be changed for any individual number.