Using buttons to open pictures

[Peter S]

After a bit of a layoff I have been playing with buttons and hyperlinks. I thought I would try opening a picture from a button as I wanted to be able to show a route around a map with buttons that could be clicked on to show a view from the selected point. I suppose I should not have been surprised that my PC promptly opened the picture (a jpg) in my default viewer Photoshop. When I closed Photoshop the slide show continued from where it had left off. What I really wanted though was a full screen picture sitting on the screen until I chose to close it.

I did not want to use a copy of the slide that had a very long display time (this seems like a workaround) but it may be the only simple solution.

Can anyone suggest any elegant way that this could be achieved?

Congratulations to Igor - the buttons look good and the change when hovering works fine.

Kind Regards

Peter

[fh1805]

Hi Peter,

Would making each of your "pop-up" images a PTE exe in its own right be a solution? I.e. click on the main map to launch the pop-up and click on the pop-up to close it and return to main map. (same principle as a menu system, really)

[nobeefstu]

Peter,

fh1805's post above has the right idea of creating a single image file exe. "IrfanView" can make a nice exe of your single image ... as it has very little overhead as compared to making it with PTE.

Other Options :

Run a commandline something like this if IrfanView is installed on your pc. Make sure to edit the paths to your own destination paths/files though in the sample command below. The command will open an image in IrfanView in fullscreen. The big limitation is this will only apply to your pc/paths.

C:\1Xp_Office\Image_Tools\InfraView\i_view32.exe C:\Documents and Settings\XP\Desktop\alluser.jpg /fs

*Also check your Photoshop for any commandlines that may be available.

[alrobin]

Peter,

You can do all of this without leaving your show or invoking other utilities.

If your presentation is not synched to music (as I imagine it is not since you are breaking away from it to display the images), simply place the images you want to be able to display at the end of the slide list as regular PTE images. Then place a dark-slide after each one, and "program" each dark slide to return to the map image with the buttons where viewers will be selecting which scene to view.

Then "program" the buttons on the map slide to skip to the slide number appropriate to each particular place. Let the "photo" slide be viewed for a specific length of time, or set it so that the viewer must click with the mouse or use the arrow button to advance to the dark slide where the viewer will be automatically returned to the map slide.

Let me know if this is not clear, and I will set up an example for you. Good luck!

[davegee]

Al,

Please remind us how to:

""program" each dark slide to return to the map image"?

Many thanks,

DaveG

[Peter S]

Peter, Al and Nobeefstu,

Many thanks for your suggestions. I will not have access to my PC for a few days but will try these ideas out early next week.

Al, I think I will also have to experiment a bit with the music side. Switching out to Photoshop and back to PTE the music seemed to start again in the same place with no problem. I have also used the navigation bar to jump back and forth and that seems to work OK. So I will just have to see how things pan out. I was hoping to have music with the main map but not with the pictures that the buttons open. Though I guess I could attach music separately to the individual pictures if I wanted to.

Thanks agin

Kind regards

Peter

[alrobin]

Please remind us how to:

""program" each dark slide to return to the map image"?

One way is to add a screen-size transparent "button" to the dark slide and program it so that when the viewer clicks on it, the show is returned to the intro slide.

[alrobin]

Another way to accomplish this is to place a copy of the Intro slide after each photo so that when the photo times out, or is advanced by manual click of the mouse or arrow key, the Intro slide will automatically appear again. In this way there is no need to use a black slide as a control point.

[davegee]

Thanks Al,

I thought you were refering to some method of "automatically" returning to slide 1 WITHOUT the mouse click.

It could also be done, I suppose, by putting an "invisible" button in, for instance the bottom right corner of each slide thus doing away with the need for the black slide.

DaveG

[thedom]

I had to solve exactly the same problem to make my "pick a card" demo (mouse select which picture to watch).

I started with this solution : at the end of the slide, automatically run the (same) exe.

It ran perfectly, except that there is a quick return to the desktop.

I finally used the solution Al describes (the second solution) but the problem is that it multiplies the number of slides and if you want to modify the intro slide, you have to do it on all slides you duplicated.

That's why I was wondering if a new option couldn't be added : at the end of a slide, go to slide # n ?

[nobeefstu]

Peter,

Expanding on using Al"s approach :

An alternative is to insert/add the image as an image object on a blank (black) slide ... instead of making it as a normal slide image. This approach avoids use of invisible buttons or hidden objects ... since now the image object itself becomes the button. Program the Action on Mouse-Click to available actions listed.

Multiple possibilites ... for example add 4 image objects on a blank (black) slide for choice selection. Program the Action on Mouse-Click for each image object as required. The 4 image objects are your 4 buttons.

The Dom"s suggestion of "at the end of a slide, go to slide # n" ... would indeed expand/addto the flexability options.