Glance is an alternative way to render actions on screen that allows to present summary of information obtained by actions or related to them. Sample Glances would be: weather forecast, stock quote, time left, last tip calculation etc. Any Glance can be composed using finely laid-out styled texts, photos and icons and can be regenerated at any time by a workflow. Glance usually substitutes action icon and title, though icon and title can be optionally preserved to keep the action easily identifiable.

Glance may be composed of several items (text, icons or images) and Glance Groups. Each Glance Group can contain other items/Groups and defines layout and visibility attributes for them. Any item or Group will be visible only if there is enough space to fully present it. Though, the first item in Glance or in a Glance Group will be always shown.

Glances can be created or updated by any workflow. For example:

• Main Workflow for the Tip action creates glance that shows the latest tip calculation summary
• Background Workflow for the Clock action creates glance that shows current time and date

Glance creation starts from an "Add Glance" task. Then such tasks like "Add Glance Group" or "Add Glance Text" should be added to the "Add Glance" task to define glance content. For example, the Background Workflow for the Clock action would look like:

It is possible to provide different content for different icon (Glance) sizes. It can be done via the Show for Icon Size option for any Glance Group or Glance itself. For example, the Weather action shows 5 days forecast for Large icon size and today's weather for other sizes. Glance size can be changed to provide optimal space for its content. It can be done either manually using action's context menu or by a workflow using a "Change Action Icon Size" task.

Some Glance Groups may have a Workflow associated with them. In such cases, those Glance Groups will be rendered as buttons. When the user taps on such a button it will lead launching an appropriate Workflow. For example, taping on the "Anna Haro" button inside a "Birthday Today" action launches a workflow that prompts to greet her.

Debugging of Glances is pretty easy with help of Data Inspector, which is enhanced to support live preview of them. To debug Glances you can:

• Add a breakpoint, which inspects the $glance variable
• Run a Workflow in the Workflow Editor and inspect Workflow results

See also:
Add Glance task
Add Glance Group task
Add Glance Icon task
Add Glance Image task
Add Glance Text task

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