"Go to Label" feature

[fh1805]

Igor,

The new "Run Slideshow" feature is excellent. Now my Menu-driven presentations to audiences can be delivered free of all desktop flashbacks! Superb!

Thanks very much for this feature.

Whilst in the area of the O&A Common tab and the Actions on mouse click... Do you have any plans to introduce a "Go to Label" feature and the ability to assign a Label to a slide? This would make the building and programming of complex, manually-controlled sequences so much easier. You and I did talk about this earlier this year in either some posts on the forum or via PMs - I forget which. At the time, as I recall, you agreed to the idea but made no committment as to when it might appear in the product.

regards,

Peter

[Igor]

Peter,

Do you have any plans to introduce a "Go to Label" feature and the ability to assign a Label to a slide? This would make the building and programming of complex, manually-controlled sequences so much easier. You and I did talk about this earlier this year in either some posts on the forum or via PMs - I forget which. At the time, as I recall, you agreed to the idea but made no committment as to when it might appear in the product.

Technically no problem. I'm thinking how to make it intuitive for user.

[fh1805]

Igor,

We already have the ability to assign a "label" to any object via the "Name" field on the Common tab of O&A. Why not use the contents of this field as the label name? All you then have to do is add "Go to label..." as an extra option in the "Action on mouse click" drop down list (with an input field below it for the actual target label name - just as we have the extra input field for the target slide number if we choose to do "Go to slide number...").

The responsibility for ensuring that the label did exist and was unique within the project could be left with the user. But it would be better if PTE did these checks whenever the user asks for a "Go to label..." action.

Internally in the code and project file you might also want to assign a flag to the target slide to indicate that it is the target of a "Go to label..." action so that you can alert the user if they try and replace or rename the image file (which I'm guessing could, in the existing code implementation, cause the name in the "Common" tab to change ? ).

Hope this helps with your design of the solution.

regards,

Peter

[davegee]

"Technically no problem. I'm thinking how to make it intuitive for user"

:rolleyes:

[JPD]

Peter,

Technically no problem. I'm thinking how to make it intuitive for user.

As I suggested years ago (after have made Jeu de taquin more than 4000 goto) : with $15 for absolute value and 15 for relative value, if the slide position is change, the value is change, like in Excel or others.

Also possible is to give a name to the slide and give the name in the function, always like in Excel or others.

It's the simplest way and many people use that in others programs.

[Igor]

I need more time to think - there are several variants how to implement this feature. And we already have too many changes in version 5.6 - difficult to carefully check up all new features and changes. Because of this I'd like to ask leave this feature for next version.

[Ronniebootwest]

Igor,

The new "Run Slideshow" feature is excellent. Now my Menu-driven presentations to audiences can be delivered free of all desktop flashbacks! Superb!

Thanks very much for this feature.

regards,

Peter

Everyone seems to be getting excited about this 'New Feature' but I am not yet able to understand just how it works, nor do I see that it is very much different from the older method of creating a page of icons and then using the 'Objects and Animation' options. Maybe I am missing something here! Can you explain please Peter?

Ron

[davegee]

Hi Ron,

Welcome back.

Do you create menus?

Do you have Vista?

If the answer is yes to both you would have had problems in the past with menus - this cures it.

Not, only that but "Run Slide Show with Return" is excellent and worth trying for yourself.

DaveG

[Lin Evans]

Hi Ron,

In the old way, we created a menu with icons, images or links which when clicked on would run another program or slideshow. With 4.x this worked very well, but with 5.x the problem arose that between leaving the called program the desktop would flash before returning to the calling menu. Also there were problems if the menu had animation and the called slideshow had animation where one or the other would be very jerky. To get around this we had to turn of hardware acceleration on one or the other which was less that satisfactory for animation. Also sometimes we had to go to the last slide of the called program and put in a "run" program to get back to the menu. Then, if someone closed out the "called from the menu" running program prematurely, the whole thing often crashed.

With the new system there is no more issue with seeing the desktop between the menu and called program, whenever the called program is terminated whether at the end or mid-show, the menu returns and you no longer need to worry about turning off the hardware acceleration on either the menu or called program nor do you need to insert the "run after this slide" command to get back to the menu, etc.

Best regards,

Lin

Everyone seems to be getting excited about this 'New Feature' but I am not yet able to understand just how it works, nor do I see that it is very much different from the older method of creating a page of icons and then using the 'Objects and Animation' options. Maybe I am missing something here! Can you explain please Peter?

Ron

[Ronniebootwest]

Hi Ron,

With the new system there is no more issue with seeing the desktop between the menu and called program, whenever the called program is terminated whether at the end or mid-show, the menu returns and you no longer need to worry about turning off the hardware acceleration on either the menu or called program nor do you need to insert the "run after this slide" command to get back to the menu, etc.

Best regards,

Lin

Thanks for the explanation Lin, I will give it a try when time permits. Meantime, I am being asked to create a pdf tutorial for creating a 'One Page Menu' similar to the one I did for version 4.48. Trouble is I do not yet fully understand how this new version works. Any assistance would be appreciated.

Ron

[fh1805]

Ron,

The "Run Slideshow" and "Run Slideshow with Return" actions are available only in v5.6 and require that all the sequences (the menu and the targets) are built using v5.6 (or higher assuming that Igor keeps on developing PTE).

"Run Slideshow with Return" is the option to use for a menu+targets arrangement. All the targets are built as normal using PTE v5.6 - no special parameter settings are needed. The menu is also built using PTE v5.6 and it must use the action command "Run Slideshow and Return".

"Run Slideshow" is the option to use to chain sequences together in a fixed, linear chain (Show A calls Show B calls Show C). In Show A you would use Project Options...More...Run application/slideshow on exit...Run Slideshow and nominate Show B.exe to be run; and so on down the chain.

The visible benefits are realised for those of us who have Windows Vista as our operating system. The disruptive and annoying "flash-backs" to our desktop view are totally eliminated. If you've never seen this phenomenon, think yourself fortunate!

If the operating system is XP then the existing "Run Application or open file" and "Run application and exit" options are still there and work just as they used to. And the XP users will not know what I'm talking about when I talk of "desktop flash-backs" because it never happened on XP.

regards,

Peter

[Ronniebootwest]

Ron,

The "Run Slideshow" and "Run Slideshow with Return" actions are available only in v5.6 and require that all the sequences (the menu and the targets) are built using v5.6 (or higher assuming that Igor keeps on developing PTE).

"Run Slideshow with Return" is the option to use for a menu+targets arrangement. All the targets are built as normal using PTE v5.6 - no special parameter settings are needed. The menu is also built using PTE v5.6 and it must use the action command "Run Slideshow and Return".

"Run Slideshow" is the option to use to chain sequences together in a fixed, linear chain (Show A calls Show B calls Show C). In Show A you would use Project Options...More...Run application/slideshow on exit...Run Slideshow and nominate Show B.exe to be run; and so on down the chain.

The visible benefits are realised for those of us who have Windows Vista as our operating system. The disruptive and annoying "flash-backs" to our desktop view are totally eliminated. If you've never seen this phenomenon, think yourself fortunate!

If the operating system is XP then the existing "Run Application or open file" and "Run application and exit" options are still there and work just as they used to. And the XP users will not know what I'm talking about when I talk of "desktop flash-backs" because it never happened on XP.

regards,

Peter

Thank you Peter, very useful explanation that will help a lot of people. I am an XP user so will not have seen the flashback problem to which you refer. I wonder if the new operating system from Microsoft will solve all of our problems? Maybe, we will wait and see!

Ron

[fh1805]

Ron,

...I wonder if the new operating system from Microsoft will solve all of our problems?...

I'm a cynic, sceptic and pessimist - I expect it will be more likely to create a whole pile of new problems than solve any of our current ones! "Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose" (which I believe translates approximately as "the more things change, the more they stay the same")

regards,

Peter

[Ken Cox]

Peter

think you are incorrect with statement" And the XP users will not know what I'm talking about when I talk of "desktop flash-backs" because it never happened on XP."

it has been a bone of contention for xp -- some people had a work around tho'

If my memory serves me right Igor had quite a problem with it

ken