Location of new Objects in Objects and Animation window

[Ed Overstreet]

There are a couple of changes I would like to see with the way the Objects palette in the O&A Window behaves when one adds a new object, either from the right-click menu or from the Add Button icon at the top of the screen.

If the user has just finished editing an object already in the palette, the default behaviour is that the just-edited object remains blue-highlit. If the user adds a new object now, using either the right-click menu or the button, the next object automatically becomes a “child” of the previous object. To avoid this happening, the user has to ensure the previous object is no longer high-lit. I do this by mouse-clicking on blank space near the bottom of the palette. That is an annoyance, but not a big deal, IF YOU KNOW ABOUT IT.

However, this is something that I have discovered (the hard way) that less-experienced users don’t realize. Nor is it easy to fix, once it’s happened. To see the absurd lengths to which this problem can evolve, check out the O&A Objects list in the attached menu show (created by a very intelligent and artistic colleague of mine at the photo club, who however is not thoroughly versed yet in the intricacies of PTE). My colleague knew this didn’t look right, but couldn’t figure out how to fix the mess. There was no reason why my colleague (or anyone else I can think of) would ever want Buttons stacked in parent-child chains like this, but that’s what happened.

I have two suggestions.

1. IMO it would be more user-friendly and more intuitive for the default behaviour in this palette to be that any new object automatically becomes a separate “parent” object. A new object should never IMO be created as a “child” of another object in that list, unless the user EXPLICITLY tells the software to do so. The current behaviour, where the software automatically creates a child if another object is high-lit, isn’t intuitive to many new users, and can be very frustrating and easy to forget even for more experienced users like me. Given that an object you just finished working on remains lit until you go out of your way to “un-light” it, which is not intuitive for a lot of users, the current default behaviour is an invitation to trouble, as seen in the attached example.

2. Once one has created a string of unwanted parent-child links, it is presently very hard to un-do the mess. The only option I’ve found is the tedious one of deleting all the objects and starting over, or of taking the time to highlight, copy to the clipboard, then delete each object one at a time, pasting the object back from the clipboard into the Objects List AFTER first making sure nothing else is high-lit. This process is needlessly cumbersome and frustrating. Instead, I’d like to see the option of clicking-and-dragging any object in the palette to another level or position in the hierarchy at will. That would make it easy to fix any inadvertent problems that rise from the issue identified in point 1 above, and in fact would make it very easy for the user to specify, change, or experiment with parent-child links at will.

In a pinch, if for some reason it is too complicated to implement suggestion 1, an implementation of suggestion 2 would achieve the desired results for both suggestions (if you understand my point). It wouldn’t matter where the new object was initially placed, as long as it’s easy to move it somewhere else if you need to. Currently, that is not easy.

Menu Show B.zip

[fh1805]

Ed,

Yeh - I've been there, done that, too! I second both of your suggestions.

regards,

Peter

[goddi]

Ed,

I agree completely. I made a similar comment in another posting about duplicating a text object in consecutive slides. I like to insert title text objects in several consecutive slides. If you copy a text object from slide#1 to slide#2, the pasted text in slide#2 automatically becomes a "child" of the image in slide#2. This duplicated text object in slide#2 does not line up with the text object in slide#1, unless you "unlight" the frame, before you paste the text object, to make it a "parent" text object so it lines up with the text object in slide#1.

Gary

[thedom]

LOL, so true, happened to me too.

+1 for this suggestion.