(upbeat music)
- [Instructor] I've already shown you my page
with some objects grouped together,
but now I'd like to back up and inspect them more closely.
Groups let us move objects together at once,
but we also have some new options available.
I've ungrouped one of my indicators for us to inspect.
I have three objects here that I want to work together:
Two rectangles and some text.
As you'd expect, I'll select all of them at once,
then right-click and select Group.
We'll look at the Group as options soon.
This group has some properties of its own now.
In addition to the standard ID and Name,
I can quickly set the group's opacity and visibility
because these properties apply to any object.
At this point,
if I want to change any of the properties
of the grouped objects, I have to select them in the tree.
If I'm going to use this group over and over however,
I can make this a bit more convenient.
I know I'm going to change the text here
every time I reuse this group,
so I'll right-click on the content and select Expose.
There is now a new section
for exposed properties at the top of the page
containing the content.
But what does this do for us?
Back on the main group object,
I see the same exposed property.
As you might guess,
I can now change the content directly from the group.
Exposing a property makes it available
to all objects above it in the hierarchy,
most of which we haven't discussed yet.
But this does go all the way to the TGML object at the top.
Keep this in mind
if you need to build a series of similar pages.
It may be worth your while
to expose the customized properties
and configure them in one place.
Another advantage of an exposed property
is that all properties with the same expose name
will be modified at once.
Back in our group,
maybe I want to change the rectangle stroke colors at once.
I'll select each of them and expose the stroke property.
Now I can adjust both at once.
Of course,
I can't show you that without warning you of the danger.
Remember, these exposed properties apply to the entire page.
Let me go to one of my other groups and expose its text.
Back in the TGML object,
MyContent is now empty
because I have two properties with different values.
If I enter something here,
it will adjust both of the groups at once,
which is not what I want.
Let me undo that.
If you want to use this TGML level editing,
the solution is to change the expose names.
Just like everything else,
Expose is just another object in the tree.
If I change the name field here,
it changes the property name that is exposed.
Now, changing one property does not affect the others.
This is all I have to discuss on groups,
but keep this section in mind.
The upcoming objects, components and layers,
both build on groups
and we have much to discuss about them.
Until then, thank you.