I have three "Oval" shapes on the base layer, and I have copied all three of them across 15 layers. This is because upon clicking each of them, their state changes. I cannot use inbuilt State features because there are permutations and combinations of shape states.
My problem: Is there a way if I move a shape on the base layer, the corresponding shape on all 15 layers moves to the same location coordinates?
Thanks for responding Walt. Attached is the story file. You could see that I have three Oval shapes on the base layer acting as hotspots. These shapes are copied and pasted at exact same coordinates on all layers that act as various combinations of screens.
This arrangement is done so that the learner won't have to get back to the base slide and to show them the status of different hotspots if they've ben visited or active. I want to move these ovals on each layer in conjunction to the base layer. Is there a way to get this functionality, or any workaround. Thanks much for your help.
Here's the way I would do it, but you may find others. As I see it, you only have 3 layers for unique content, all the others are to allow the different states of the menu buttons. Also, each layer has the same menu space set aside for the menu buttons. Given those two facts, I say let the ovals show through from the base, and let the learner click on them. That solves your original question - How can the ovals on the other layers stay in the same position as the originals, if I move the originals? But it does raise some other design questions.
.Starting from there, you can use the Selected state to show which layer is active, if you make the three ovals a button group. I created an initial state (Initial), thinking that toward the end, there might be some complex trigger conditions involved. If so, conditions like "if state is not normal" don't work well, because the built-in states are like most of us - they like to think they are normal. As it turned out, the triggers are pretty simple, and you might be able to get along without the Initial state.
The difficulty was, as I see it, is that you want the active oval to show active, whether or not it has been visited, then when inactive, return to visited. The built-in Visited state can't do that, unless you create triggers to do it. Because writing triggers that duplicate the built-in actions makes you vulnerable to lots of nasty, unexpected conflicts, I created an Accessed state, and wrote triggers for it. I did need one variable to return from active to visited, but it is reset at the start of the timeline, and can be reused on each slide.
I disabled the Next button, and enabled it when conditions are right, because the complexity of clicking a button and writing all the appropriate conditions is overwhelming. That's due mainly to my interpretation that you always want the current layer to show as active, rather than visited. If that is the case, there is never a time when all three are visited at the same time.
For me the most valuable part was learning how to have complex shapes have a hover state that is unique to the previous state - each hover grows, and keeps not only its color, but any text or other object that is on it.
That is superb Walt. Thank you so much. Hope you learned something new as well. It was superb to see less clutter in the Layers pane , and the work done in the Triggers section. Perfectly suits my solution. I was a bit skeptical for slides 2 and 3 though, as they seemed irrelevant/redundant to me. Only the first slide does the needful. Therefore, I deleted them. Hope that's okay?
It's yours, do as you wish :) I only included the other slides to show that the solution is scalable. You can duplicate the slide, and everything still works on the new slide.
5 Replies
There might be some ways to do what you want. Attach your .story file here, and let us take a look at where you are going.
Thanks for responding Walt. Attached is the story file. You could see that I have three Oval shapes on the base layer acting as hotspots. These shapes are copied and pasted at exact same coordinates on all layers that act as various combinations of screens.
This arrangement is done so that the learner won't have to get back to the base slide and to show them the status of different hotspots if they've ben visited or active. I want to move these ovals on each layer in conjunction to the base layer. Is there a way to get this functionality, or any workaround. Thanks much for your help.
Rush,
Here's the way I would do it, but you may find others. As I see it, you only have 3 layers for unique content, all the others are to allow the different states of the menu buttons. Also, each layer has the same menu space set aside for the menu buttons. Given those two facts, I say let the ovals show through from the base, and let the learner click on them. That solves your original question - How can the ovals on the other layers stay in the same position as the originals, if I move the originals? But it does raise some other design questions.
.Starting from there, you can use the Selected state to show which layer is active, if you make the three ovals a button group. I created an initial state (Initial), thinking that toward the end, there might be some complex trigger conditions involved. If so, conditions like "if state is not normal" don't work well, because the built-in states are like most of us - they like to think they are normal. As it turned out, the triggers are pretty simple, and you might be able to get along without the Initial state.
The difficulty was, as I see it, is that you want the active oval to show active, whether or not it has been visited, then when inactive, return to visited. The built-in Visited state can't do that, unless you create triggers to do it. Because writing triggers that duplicate the built-in actions makes you vulnerable to lots of nasty, unexpected conflicts, I created an Accessed state, and wrote triggers for it. I did need one variable to return from active to visited, but it is reset at the start of the timeline, and can be reused on each slide.
I disabled the Next button, and enabled it when conditions are right, because the complexity of clicking a button and writing all the appropriate conditions is overwhelming. That's due mainly to my interpretation that you always want the current layer to show as active, rather than visited. If that is the case, there is never a time when all three are visited at the same time.
For me the most valuable part was learning how to have complex shapes have a hover state that is unique to the previous state - each hover grows, and keeps not only its color, but any text or other object that is on it.
That is superb Walt. Thank you so much. Hope you learned something new as well. It was superb to see less clutter in the Layers pane , and the work done in the Triggers section. Perfectly suits my solution. I was a bit skeptical for slides 2 and 3 though, as they seemed irrelevant/redundant to me. Only the first slide does the needful. Therefore, I deleted them. Hope that's okay?
It's yours, do as you wish :) I only included the other slides to show that the solution is scalable. You can duplicate the slide, and everything still works on the new slide.
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