Forum Discussion
Please allow groups to be selectable from the States selection pane in Triggers.
Hi,
It is very convenient how grouped objects will automatically react together in response to a mouse click - for example, clicking on *any* part of a group can trigger all objects in that group to change to "Visited".
However, in the trigger options, the Group does not exist, only the objects within the group exist. So, if a button is made of multiple objects in a group, and you want to manually trigger a change in those objects, you need to create a separate trigger for each object.
This inconsistency is disappointing: when using the built-in / automatic states, grouped items behave like a single object, but when using manual triggers, the group doesn't exist and each object must be handled separately.
It would be really nice if groups were selectable in the "Change state of..." triggers.
4 Replies
To further emphasise this inconsistency, Groups *are* selectable in the "When user clicks..." trigger options.
Hi DeveloperIgniti,
Thanks for taking the time to explain this so clearly, and thanks, AndrewBlemings-, for chiming in.
Your example does a great job highlighting how groups behave like a single object in some trigger contexts but not others, which creates extra authoring work when you need to change states manually.
I'd like to better understand how often you run into this while authoring. Is it something you encounter occasionally, or in most of the interactions you create? Also, approximately how many grouped objects or custom controls do you typically build in a project before this becomes noticeable?
Understanding how frequently this comes up and the types of interactions you're building helps us better understand the impact a capability like this could have on your authoring experience.
Speaking for myself, I tend to just avoid grouping objects in general, in large part because I have noticed over the years that it affected how they could be interacted with. Groups make sense to me as logical containers, such as collecting (and hiding) a bunch of UI elements that I no longer need to see on the timeline, but that the grouping changes how I can interact with them means I just avoid them. I've taken to mostly using layers now as a replacement for groups.
I would like the option to for instance set a group of buttons to disabled after one is selected/clicked, facilitating a choose-one interaction.
You should post this in the Suggest Ideas section too. It would pretty awesome, I agree.
