Transparent To Selection VS Ignore Objects Not Selected

[Lin Evans]

In the process of writing the documentation for Objects and Animations, I realized that I did not understand the difference between the feature "Transparent to Selection" (found under the Common tab in the O&A screen) and the "Ignore Objects Not Selected" (found when clicking the Tools button). They seemed to do the same identical thing - that is when actuated, you could simply select an object in the Objects list and when you clicked on the bounding green rectangle in the "View" held down the left mouse button, you could drag and resize and position the selected object. When you clicked inside you could then "move" the selected object regardless of which layer it resided on.

Whether you used "transparent to selection" or "ignore objects not selected" the result was the same. So I just assumed they were different ways of doing the same thing, but I wanted to be clear so I asked Igor to explain whether there was any differences. The answer is a very important yes - there is a difference!

The "Tools" under the "tool" button ONLY affect the Editor - they have absolutely no effect in the slideshow produced. On the other hand, "Transparent to Selection" works in both the editor AND the slideshow produced. Then what does this mean to your sideshow?

Let's take a practical example. We all know we can assign "action attributes" to buttons or text, etc. So what if we created a button, made it pretty large, placed it in the upper right hand corner of the screen then set it's "action" to exit. If we then went to the preview and clicked on the button it would cause the preview of the slideshow to cease and would perform an "exit" back to the O&A editor. If we were to create an executable slideshow, then left clicking our mouse on this button would cause the slideshow to cease and perform an "exit". But what if we simply changed the button to the layer "beneath" the main screen so that it was invisible then tried clicking on the upper right part of the screen where we know the button is "hiding"? It would do nothing because the screen was effectively "hiding" the button so that the mouse click had zero effect.

Now, set the main screen's attribute to "transparent to selection" and click in the upper right hand corner. What happens now? What happens is that setting a check-mark beside the main screen on the "common tab" makes the screen "transparent to selection" so that now the program can "see" the button lying on the layer beneath the screen and when we click in the upper right hand corner, the slideshow would exit!

So the difference is, that "transparent to selection" works both in the Editor AND on the slideshow while "Ignore Objects Not Selected" works only in the Editor. This major difference opens up many new possibilities for those who want to program interesting possibilities into their executable slideshows.

Lin