Readout View

Readout View, the default mode of view, displays the current battery status in an iconic and textual format. In this mode Battery Charge Monitor displays the following information:

Graph View

Graph View displays the percentage of charge remaining in your battery as a moving graph. The horizontal axis represents time and the vertical axis represents charge percentage with 100% charged being the top of the graph. By default the graph is green when your computer is connected to the power supply and blue when it isn't. The graph also changes colour when the charge drops below the Low Charge Threshold (see Properties — General) the default colour in this case is red.

Properties — General

• Follow Panel Size — instructs Battery Charge Monitor to resize when the panel changes size. It is checked on by default. In order for Applet Height and Applet Width settings to take affect, it must be unchecked.

• Applet Height & Applet Width — these two spin buttons allow you to specify the dimensions of Battery Charge Monitor exactly in pixels. In order for these settings to take affect, Follow Panel Size must be unchecked. The default values are both set to 48.

  Setting these values very small (below 28 pixels) results in the battery icon not being displayed due to lack of space.

• Update Interval — specifies in seconds how often Battery Charge Monitor refreshes the battery charge information it displays. The default setting is two seconds.

• Low Charge Threshold — is a percentage value of the battery charge that Battery Charge Monitor uses to optionally display a warning, it then considers the battery to have little power remaining. For example this information is used to decide when to change the colour of the battery icon in Readout View. The default value is 25.

• Applet Mode — the two Readout and Graph checkboxes are another way of toggling between Readout View and Graph View.

Properties — Readout

The settings on this tab only affect Battery Charge Monitor when it is in Readout View.

All of the coloured rectangles on this tab can be left clicked on to display the GNOME colour wheel. This enables you to choose colours that you may prefer more than the defaults.

• AC-On Battery Color — specifies the colour of the battery icon in Readout view when your computer is connected to the AC power supply. The default colour is green.

• AC-Off Battery Color — specifies the colour of the battery icon in Readout View when your computer is not connected to the AC power supply. The default colour is green.

• Low Battery Color — specifies the colour of the battery icon in Readout View when the charge percentage rate drops below the Low Charge Threshold (see Properties — General). The default colour is red.

Properties — Graph

The settings on this tab only affect Battery Charge Monitor when it is in Graph View.

All of the coloured rectangles on this tab can be left clicked on to display the GNOME colour wheel. This enables you to choose colours that you may prefer more than the defaults.

• AC-On Battery Color — specifies the colour of the graph when your computer is connected to the AC power supply. The default colour is green.

• AC-Off Battery Color —: specifies the colour of the graph when your computer is not connected to the AC power supply. The default colour is blue.

• Graph Battery Low Color — specifies the colour of the graph when the charge percentage rate drops below the Low Charge Threshold. The default colour is red.

• Graph Tick Color — specifies the colour of the graph division lines on the graph which mark the 25%, 50% and 75% charge points. The default colour is dark grey.

• Graph Direction — specifies which direction the graph moves over time. The default direction is Right to Left.

Properties — Battery Charge Messages

• Warn in the battery charge dips below — specifies the charge percentage at which Battery Charge Monitor shows a warning dialogue box that the battery is at a low charge. This warning is only displayed if Enable Low Battery Warning is checked. The default setting is 5%.

• Enable Low Battery Warning — specifies if Battery Charge Monitor should display a dialogue box warning that the battery charge has dropped below the charge percentage specified in the Warn if the battery charge dips below setting. The default value is checked.

• Enable Full-Charge Notification — specifies if Battery Charge Monitor should display a dialogue box when the battery has reached its 100% charged rate. The default value is unchecked.