Developer > The Macro Properties Panel

The Macro Properties panel can be shown in the Scripting Explorer and in the Scripting Workbench. The Properties panel goes hand and hand with the Macro Designer view of macros. It allows you to view and edit the properties of macro commands shown in the Macro Designer view.

In the following example, the upper panel shows the Macro Designer view and the lower panel shows the Macro Properties view. The Designer view shows the sequence of commands executed by the "Macro3" macro. One of those commands -- the "Open" command -- is selected. The Property panel shows the parameters for the selected "Open" operation:

The Properties panel allows you to interactively edit the parameters of the various commands displayed in the Macro Designer panel. As properties are updated, the script's code is automatically updated in the background.

For example, suppose you wanted to change the code to use a different kernel for a filter operations. This code can be edited interactively by choosing a different option for the Shape parameter in the Properties window.

Another important use of the Properties window is to control the visibility and interactivity of parameters in scripts. For example, if the Visibility for the Strength parameter is set to True and its Interactivity is set to False, this translates into the following code.

.Parameters("Strength").Visible = True
.Parameters("Strength").Interactive = False

Finally, the Properties window allows you to select which variable each command uses for its input or output, this is important when building command sequences that interact with active documents.