Feature Suggestions

[SilverSurfer]

Hello,

I love Pic to Exe! It is a great program!

However, here are 4 features that would dramatically improve the navigation of pics within a project. It would really spice up Pic to Exe very much!

1) HOTSPOTS:

Have hotspots for linking to other Pic to Exe pages (and websites and external files). For instance, you could create rectangular hotspots around little thumbnail images on a page. The user clicks on a thumbnail image, and the larger image gets displayed on a new page.

2) IMAGE ROLLOVER EFFECTS:

For instance, a user drags their mouse over a hotspot that is on top of an image. The image then gets replaced by a different image that looks the same, except it has a glow effect. To the user, the image appears to glow when the mouse is dragged over the image. This feature would also be very useful for picture navigation. I suggest having 3 different possible types of image rollovers that occur on:

1) Mouse Hover,

2) Mouse Click Down

3) Mouse Click Up

The actual "link command" in the hotspot could be associated with Mouse Click Up.

3) SOUND EFFECTS FOR HOTSPOTS:

Be able to associate a sound file with a hot spot. For instance, when you click down on a hotspot a .mp3 or .wav is played that makes a "click" sound.

4) SHOW & HIDE IMAGE COMMANDS

You would use these two different commands in hotspots as little scripts to hide and show images on mouse events (e.g. mouse click down, mouse click up, and mouse hover)

For instance, you could create a hotspot over a thumbnail image that triggers the following script on mouse hover:

Show("BigImage1")

Then create another hotspot that is underneath the smaller hotspot (but still on top of image thumbnail), but is larger, thus making the smaller hotspot surrounded. In this hotspot, you would insert the command:

Hide("BigImage1")

triggered on mouse hover.

The result is everytime you hover your mouse over the image thumbnail, the bigger image gets displayed (on same page). And when you move the mouse away from the thumbnail image, the big image gets hidden. You can do all sorts of neat stuff with this functionality. And if you can apply the "Show" and "Hide" commands to hotspots, you can do even more cool stuff.

These features would make a Pic to Exe project much more interactive and exciting!

SilverSurfer

[JRR]

Silversurfer:

Interesting suggestions you have.

Have you looked at using OBJECT EDITOR as I think some (not all) of those features are already available, but perhaps not as flexibly as you might like.

[alrobin]

Maybe Granot will design an add-on to provide these features!

[bddorsey]

Please please please allow us to view thumbnails of images! It's so hard to sort them all by name!

And allow creation of Quicktime as well!

And a mac version too!

Thanks.

~bd

[boxig]

SilverSurfer

Have hotspots for linking to other Pic to Exe pages (and websites and external files). For instance, you could create rectangular hotspots around little thumbnail images on a page. The user clicks on a thumbnail image, and the larger image gets displayed on a new page.

Can you explain ? You can do all this with simple actions by click on image, so why you want to add HotSpot ?

You can make HotSpot by making a tranparent GIF image if you insist.

Be able to associate a sound file with a hot spot. For instance, when you click down on a hotspot a .mp3 or .wav is played that makes a "click" sound.

You can do this by "Run application or open file". I never tried it but I think if you link the command to a WAV file, it will open Windows Media Player (well, not the best option, but I'm sure that's what will happen). But you can make a little trick - duplicate the slide and customize the second slide with the sound you want. So with a few more slides you can actually make what you want. The user will not see that the slides changed but he will here the sound. If you have many buttons, you will have to make a lot of slides (for example, if you have 5 buttons, you will need around 25 slides to make this trick).

Same way you can do all other things, but not the mouse over.

Granot

[boxig]

About Thumbnails

Can someone explain what you mean by show thumbnails ? Where you want to see them ?

On first (index) page ? - this you can do with PTE.

On each page ? - this will hide the main picture.

On a separate utility ? - which will run with your show and you can minimize it or open it when you like ? - this can not be used with full screen.

Do you want them to open big image by click ? - then this must be used from the show itself.

So why you don't check my utilities ? There are some similar programs there. But if you tell me what exactly you want, maybe can do.

Granot

[Joe Webb]

THUMBNAILS EXPLAINED

Like others, I come to PTE as an AV worker - from using two slide projectors to show a sequence of photographic slides with sound (music and/or commentary). Traditionally the slides would have been placed in sequence on a light box on which you could see each slide and get a better "feel" for the order in which they would be shown. With the light box you could easily check for interesting dissolves or better arranging of colours etc.

By asking to see thumbnails I would be looking for a replacement for the light box inside PTE. It would be used in place of the Slide List and so could be position there - as others have said it is easier to use than a list of file names!

At the moment I use Photo Album 4 to arrange the slides (and batch rename them), once saved they are then imported into PTE in the correct sequence. Having this option in PTE would make the programme more "complete" and eliminate the need for additional programmes.

Hope that helps, best wishes.

[alrobin]

Joe,

I, too, come from a multi-projector AV background, using a light-table, and that is why I designed the "dark-table" into my "Adjustor" spreadsheet model. I find it usefull in organizing the slides after they have been imported roughly into PTE. It's best feature is that it then can be used to "export" the revised order back into a list compatible with PTE. (see my separate post elsewhere in the forum, Adjustor )

Unfortunately, at present, the dark-table in Adjustor imports the image files at the same size as used in the show, and then reduces the image size for display purposes on the "dark-table", making the initial setting up rather slow.

However, with large shows, it is possible to first create a folder of thumbnails with the same folder and file names as those for the larger images, (using IrfanView, or one of the other thumb-nail programs).

These thumb-nail images can then be used by "Adjustor", thus speeding up the process of loading and rearrangement. Then, when the script produced by Adjustor is loaded back into PTE, and the original image folder is renamed back to its original name, the images will be selected in the order desired.

The advantage of this procedure over simply using one of the other thumb-nail programs for rearranging the slides is that, in the latter, the slides have to be renamed in order to preserve their order for importing into PTE. This is not so bad if it occurs at the beginning of the show's creation, but it can be a nuisance if there has already been extensive rearrangement, customization, or synchronization applied to the show. The other advantage in using Adjustor in this manner, is that it can also be used for tweaking some of the timing while the slides are being rearranged.

This may sound like a lot of complicated work, but for a large show, it is not nearly as time-consuming as trying to sort out the list of slides within PTE, especially when the names in the list on the right-hand side are obscured by long pathnames.

Hopefully, Igor will design something similar into PTE in the near future so there won't be the need for these separate utilities.

[boxig]

Joe,

So you want to see thumbnails in the Slide List. I think it will be very easy for Igor to add. If you first collect all your images to a new folder in C: then the paths will be very short, something like: C:\X\image.jpg so there is enough place for thumbs and list.

As for the meantime, I made a small program which I think it is what we are talking about. I will post a new topic with all details. Let me know if it helps.

Granot

[Joe Webb]

Thank you Granot, I hope Igor is listening(!). My thanks also to you, Al, I have downloaded your Adjustor and will give it a try over the next few days.

Thank you again and best wishes.

[SilverSurfer]

Hey all,

The suggestions I made are common features in mulitmedia authoring programs, and also used extensively for web pages.

They would make a slide show more interactive. I think they could be implemented fairly easily.

I love the object editor, but does not have the functionality I have described. You can however, make an image itself a link. But it does not have any image roll over effects.

Hotspots give you alot more power. They are used extensively in multimedia applications and web pages.

For instance, with hotspots you can make an image map by drawing hotspots on certain parts of an image (such as a picture of the earth and its continents for instance) that are associated with different links. You could have a hotspot on top of each continent, which is linked to a P2E page with pictures of that continent. Such as zebras in africa, or whatever. This form of user navigation is known as a Image Map.

You could actually make an image map without hotspots by slicing the image into peices and align all the pieces next to each other, so the image looks like one large image. You could then link each piece of the image with a link to a different P2E page. Website developers use this "old school" method to create an Image Map as well.

SilverSurfer

[Igor]

I find interersting idea about Hotspots in Visual editor of objects. Thank you. We'll discuss scripts support, highlighting and sound effects.

Optional "Thumbnails" view of Slide list in our plans.

Now we're near to finish work on the new mp3 player, and probably OGG Vorbis support can be added in the future.