Steve S

Elanor, Open your project and have a look in Project Options>Main. Have you mistakenly checked the box “Display Slides In Random Order”? Steve.

Ron, You make a good point. It has long been a rule of thumb for Desktop Publishers to restrict themselves to no more than three fonts on a page; otherwise it begins to look messy and amateurish. Web designers tend to restrict themselves to a limited colour palate, such as various shades of three main colours. When it comes to building presentations the same guidelines are valid. Often the simplest approach is the most effective, and the most professional looking. I try to keep these things in mind for my own projects. Steve.

Lumenlux, Following on from Ron’s info and having a play with the “Psuedo Button” idea it is very simple to apply. First create you navigation panel, I used Photoshop, and save it as an image. You will also need to create images of solid colour of a size and shape to cover the parts of the navigation panel image that you want to act as buttons. Open P2E and create a slide with the navigation panel image. Now import the solid colour images as required. Place each one over the main graphic where you want your buttons to be. Right click and assign the action you want, and also select transparency. This now give you an apparent button just where you want it on you navigation panel. There’s an example of one I’ve put together to demonstrate how I’m using this feature HERE. Steve.

Instead of using Save As have you tried Save For Web. This will give you a jpeg file with all the unnecessary info stripped out. The end result is a smaller file size of the same image quality. Steve.

Doh! Now I fully undestand. I didn't realise that pictures could be assigned clickable actions. There will be no stopping me now! Steve.

You're not alone in this, but I don't think that such a resource exists. If it did it would need re-writing after every new version release. That's an awful lot of work for someone. Steve.

Ron, That makes sense to me. You are obviously making use of the highlighted relief effect edge that remains when the background is transparent to give your rectangle button a 3D effect. Thanks. What would be really neat is if the edges could also be made transparent. This would then allow a “button” to be designed in Photoshop of any shape or form, with a fully transparent Object Button dropped over it. The design potential for navigation panels would then be immensely enhanced. Perhaps this will come in a future version. Steve.

Way to go Ron! You've nailed it, I had missed out the Permit Control Of Show checkbox. Thanks, I'd almost pulled out all of my hair, and what's left is precious to me. How have you managed to construct hidden buttons? The best I can do is end up with a white outline by making the fill transparent. Which only really works on a white background. Steve.

Has anyone had come across this problem before and worked out how to fix it? I’m using ver 4.3 and I’m finding that my mouse buttons don’t work during a presentation when Custom Syncronizsation is enabled. This means that I can’t use any of the object buttons, which is annoying me. I tried a range of object buttons with different functions. I tried using the mouse buttons set at default values in Project Options > Advanced. I tried using the mouse buttons set to custom functions in Project Options > Advanced. I tried a selection of music files in different formats. None of these conditions allowed the mouse buttons to work. If the Custom Syncronization is not enabled everything works fine. I’m puzzled. Can anyone help? Steve.

OOPS! Posted in error.

Tom, An excellent question! I’m sure most folk hadn’t thought of this but should it happen then it would change immediately the current cordial of sites such as Beechbrook. I don’t think anyone has experienced malicious code yet otherwise it would undoubtedly have been flagged up on this forum. Perhaps the global user group of P2E is too small to be of interest to virus writers and malicious hackers.

As far as I’m aware if you upload your file as either .zip or .exe just as you would an image, all you need to do is put a link to that file direct, not a web page. This should then open the download box giving your visitors the option to either view or save the file (if it's .exe, save only if it's .zip).

Ron, You’re probably right. It’s time to put this to rest. It was fun, I’ve enjoyed the frank exchange of opinion with Ken but this thread obviously isn’t going to progress much further. Time to agree to disagree. Ken, thanks for the input. Live long and prosper.

FXDesigner’s approach to protecting his images is reasonable and prudent. The situation I see here is different. By making freely available, without any checks or restrictions, a tool for ripping out the pictures from a P2E presentation Boxig has entered the twilight zone. He may have done it with the best of intentions but the manner in which he makes it available makes him complicit in any copyright infringements made using his script. Look at what happened to Napster, “we don’t condone it, all we did was make the website and utilities available”. It would make more sense to offer this on a one to one basis rather than globally. Boxig has done something that at best is well intended but irresponsible, at worst it’s illegal. Ken, I keep a lot of valuable files on my computer and would hate to lose them. That’s why I back up my data regularly. Using loss of data as the reason for making this software freely available strikes me as a poor excuse. “Nothing is sacred on the web” Only to thieves and ignoramuses. A P2E exe file is not on the web to be stolen but as a product. And a product that is secure - unless someone is given special software to dismantle it. I imagine that a lot of people would like to steal my car, but I don’t tell them where the keys are and explain how to get them. Nor would I give them to a stranger without asking questions first. I appreciate that this is done in a spirit of a Good Samaritan, but it seem very poorly thought through to me.

I’m not sure if I’ve misunderstood the topic here, so please bear with me and forgive my ignorance. Am I correct in thinking that someone has posted here for the first time and asked how to rip off the images embedded in a P2E presentation, and been given the info they wanted? If this is the case then the main reason for using P2E (the security of the images) has just been wiped out in an instant. Please, please tell me that I’m mistaken.