The Web Center is an internally controlled version of Internet Explorer.  It is essentially a web browser within a PowerHome window.  You may set the startup webpage to be any URL you like, either internal or external to PowerHome.  This parameter controls whether the Web Center will appear within PowerHome as a normal window or will appear as a background.  If a screen is a window, it can be resized, moved, minimized, or closed.  A background does not have a title bar and cannot be closed or moved.  However, windows or other backgrounds may appear on top of a background, thereby obscuring it.  Choose whether you want the Web Center to be Windowed or Background.

When PowerHome is launched or reinitialized, you can have it default open one of several windows.  Choose the window you want PowerHome to automatically launch from this dropdown.  You may also create a trigger on Startup or ReInit and call functions to launch additional windows or windows not in the dropdown.

PowerHome may occasionally pop-up informational or selection type windows.  These windows all have a countdown timer in which the window will automatically close or choose the default selection and automatically close.  This value controls how long that countdown timer is.  The default value is 5.

The Drop Down Line parameter is default set to 0 and this is fine as the functionality for this has not been fully implemented yet.  The only place that it currently has an effect is on the drop down for the Macro Player on the main PowerHome frame.

When PowerHome starts, it will normally pop-up two selection windows.  The first window will ask if you want to automatically turn Timed Events on.  If the answer is yes (the default), the next selection window will ask if you want to Execute Past Due Timed Events (the default is yes).  Both of these windows are determined by other parameters below.  If Quiet Start is checked, both of these windows are suppressed with their default values being automatically executed (assuming the parameters below are set to normally cause these windows to be displayed).

Checking this option will cause PowerHome to minimize to the system tray when the main PowerHome frame is minimized.  If this option is not checked, PowerHome will minimize to the Start bar like most Windows applications.

Checking this parameter will cause PowerHome to display a messagebox before it shuts down confirming that you indeed would like to shutdown.

Checking this parameter will cause PowerHome to append any exports made from the PowerHome Explorer to an already existing file rather than overwriting the file if it already exists.

Within PowerHome, some windows are only allowed a single instance to be opened.  The Control Center, the Web Center, Device Status, etc. are examples of windows that can only be opened a single time.  The PowerHome Explorer window however may be opened multiple times with a different set of data displayed within each window.  Checking this option will override the normal operation and allow only a single PowerHome Explorer window to be opened.

This section allows you to customize the color scheme used in the PowerHome Explorer.  You can set the foreground and background colors for the left hand pane (the tree) and the foreground and background colors for both even and odd rows in the right hand pane maintenance screens.

Checking this option will cause PowerHome to automatically start the Timed Event timer upon startup.  If “Quiet Start” is not checked, a selection window will be displayed with a countdown timer asking if you want to start the Timed Event timer.  The default value will be “yes”.

If “Activate Timed Events at Startup” is checked (and the default of yes is selected), PowerHome will next pop-up a selection window asking if past timed events should be executed (the default is yes).  This means that any events that should have been executed in the past will all be executed.

If you don’t Execute Past Timed Events at Startup, then PowerHome will automatically calculate the appropriate time for the Timed Event to next be run.  If it has been a long time since PowerHome was last run with a lot of past due Timed Events, it could take an extremely long time for PowerHome to catch up.  In this case, it would be best to let Timed Events automatically start, but not execute past due events.

When a macro is made to wait with the “Wait” command, its state is written to the database.  If PowerHome were to be shutdown and restarted (manual or power failure), checking this box would cause any macros which were waiting prior to the shutdown or reinit to resume and execute.

Checking this parameter will cause PowerHome to automatically start any controllers defined in the “Controllers” section of the PowerHome Explorer Setup.  Normally you would want to start controllers when PowerHome is launched, but if there is a problem with a controller causing PowerHome to hang or error out, you can uncheck this box allowing PowerHome to start without an error so that the problem can be fixed.

Checking this parameter will cause any defined Plugins to automatically be started when PowerHome starts.  However, you may want to temporarily disable the loading of plugins for reasons similar to those listed in the “Load Controllers” section.

The next parameter controls what events are logged in the Event Log.  You can select to log only the events that you are interested in tracking.  I recommend that you initially log every event until you are comfortable with PowerHome as the log is extremely useful in troubleshooting any problems you may be having.

If you only have access to the internet via a proxy server, this section allows you to define the parameters so that PowerHome can access the internet for freedb access on the formula function ph_geturl.