OVERVIEW OF THE GUI

Menu Items

Task Buttons

The left edge of Lighthouse Trader contains a column of “task” buttons. These represent the primary activities you will be performing. When you click a task button, a new “task window” will appear. Most tasks allow you to create multiple instances of the same task simultaneously. For example, if you click the “Scan” button twice, you will see two scanning windows, each of which allows you to define and perform a different scan, simultaneously.

Task Windows

A “task window” is simply the window that is displayed when you click on a task button.  Task windows occupy the main body of the Lighthouse Trader display space.

You may activate any number of task windows simultaneously. For example, you can display a chart while performing a complex scan and back-testing a trading strategy, all at the same time. To switch between task windows, click the tab at the top. Each task will continue to run, even when you click on a different window. This is especially powerful on PC’s having “dual-core” processors, as both processors will be used to accelerate the application.

Task windows all follow the same general arrangement, visually. Click the following thumbnail to see an enlarged example of a chart definition window:

You can see several tabs at the top of the  window, labeled “Intraday Data", "Real-time Scanner", etc.  Click on these tabs to switch between any of the active tasks.

Along the right edge of the window you can see three additional tabs. Each task window has these tabs, labeled “S”, “M”, and “R”.

• The “S” tab stands for “specifications”. When you click on the “S” tab, Lighthouse Trader displays the specification window for that task. This is where you specify any choices or information required for that task to operate.
• The “M” tab stands for “messages.” Clicking this tab causes the message window for that task to be displayed. Each task may display status/progress/informational messages here. The content of the messages depends on the task. For example, the scanning task displays the symbols which meet the filtering requirements you specified for that scan.
• The “R” tab stands for “results." Tasks which generate results which cannot be displayed simply as a series of text messages (in the “M” message window) will display their results in the results window. For example, the charting task will display the actual chart in the results window. The scanning task will display a sortable table of symbols along with other statistics in the results window.

At the bottom edge of the main window you can see a pair of buttons labeled“Generate Chart” and “Close.”  Each task will present you with a slightly different set of buttons,
but they all serve the same basic purpose. They allow you to initiate processing for that task.  For example, the scanning task will begin performing the scan when you click the appropriately labeled button here. Each task will also display a “Close” or “Cancel” button which will remove that task from the collection of active task windows.

Some tasks may also display “Next” and “Back” buttons here. These buttons take
you to additional specification screens for tasks that are more complex and require additional settings.

When a task begins processing (by clicking on a button such as “Generate Chart” or “Scan” or whatever is appropriate for that particular task), a “Stop” button will be displayed. You may click the “Stop” button at any time to interrupt the processing for that task. This can be helpful for certain tasks that take longer to complete. For example, if you have defined a complex scan, and then decide that you want to change one of the filter settings for that scan, you can click the “Stop” button to immediately stop the scan and return to the specification window to make your changes.

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