Making A Menu

[foto1]

I would like to format some columns and rows of text and convert each entry into a hyperlink to a photo or document. Thus making it a menu.

Does anybody have any tips for doing this quickly and easily?

Thank you everyone for your patience of my naiveté.

[Lin Evans]

Objects and Animations screen, Common Tab, Action on Mouse Click

Your choices are:

None

Exit

Next Slide

Previous Slide

Help

Go to First Slide

Go to Slide Number....

Pause

Open Web Page

Write Email

Run Application or Open File

Print Picture/Slide

Run Application and Exit

A hyperlink essentially takes the viewer to a website of your choice in which case the choice would be Open Web Page. If your picture is on a slide then you would use that choice. If you want to open a document then you would "run application or open file" and the software you use to run the document would have to support pulling up a particular document, etc.

Just create your text with PTE then choose the appropriate mouse action for that text.

Best regards,

Lin

I would like to format some columns and rows of text and convert each entry into a hyperlink to a photo or document. Thus making it a menu.

Does anybody have any tips for doing this quickly and easily?

Thank you everyone for your patience of my naiveté.

[stonemason]

If your menu is going to run other PTE shows, don't forget to turn off hardware acceleration in the menu exe.

Regards

Geoff

[goddi]

If your menu is going to run other PTE shows, don't forget to turn off hardware acceleration in the menu exe.

Regards

Geoff

Geoff... Would you please explain why you recommend that the hardware acceleration should be turned off in the menu.exe. I just main a slideshow that has a menu.exe that has two buttons to run separate PTE shows. I did not turn off the hardware acceleration in my menu.exe but everything works OK. What am I missing? Thanks... Gary

[stonemason]

Hi Gary current wisdom is that you should not have two hardware accelerated exe files running at the same time, which is what happens if your menu continues to run in the background, while your slideshow is running. What the technical reasons are I'm not sure, there are others here better qualified than me to give you a technical explanation, which I'm sure they will if they read this post. If not then PM Brian conflow or Lin Evans and I'm sure they will help.

Regards

Geoff

[goddi]

Hi Gary current wisdom is that you should not have two hardware accelerated exe files running at the same time, which is what happens if your menu continues to run in the background, while your slideshow is running. What the technical reasons are I'm not sure, there are others here better qualified than me to give you a technical explanation, which I'm sure they will if they read this post. If not then PM Brian conflow or Lin Evans and I'm sure they will help.

Regards

Geoff

Thanks... I just noticed the reference in Lin's Help PDF about not activating the Hardware Acceleration in the Menu.exe. But he says to have it checked in the main slideshows. So, if this is done, what happens when you have run both shows from the menu.exe. Will two Hardware Accelerations be running at the same time? What if someone runs the shows several times without exiting the program? Will there be several Hardware Accelerations running at the same time??? What might happen if this does occur??? Thanks.... Gary

[foto1]

Sorry I should be clearer in my post.

My question is not how to make a menu.

It is..

How do I format columns and rows - before making the menu.

thanks

[Lin Evans]

Since PTE isn't a word processor, there is no way to "format" text into either rows or columns. You can manually insert returns in text as you write it to manually create a column, or you can let it fill the screen at a given font size before hitting Enter.

But my suggestion, if you want formatted rows and columns of text is to create the text in your favorite word processor. Save the file, capture the screen and crop to suit then save as a jpg and use this as an object. The formatted text can then have any mouse click attribute assigned just as text created in the program. Having test in the program is a convenience but as said earlier, it's not a word processor. It would be very easy to simply use your word processor and get the text looking exactly as you want it the simply capture it as an image and use the image.

Best regards,

Lin

Sorry I should be clearer in my post.

My question is not how to make a menu.

It is..

How do I format columns and rows - before making the menu.

thanks

[Lin Evans]

Hi,

Since there will never be more than two executable files running simultaneously, just turn off hardware acceleration for the menu and turn it on for each slideshow. You can run dozens of slideshows from your menu but when each ends the exe for that slideshow is closed and control returns to the menu. The issue concerning turning off hardware acceleration in the menu primarily came about because some users who were running animations in their menus noticed jerky movement in their slideshows when hardware acceleration was on in the menus. Apparently hardware acceleration is "exclusive" meaning it's designed to work with a single program at a time. The work-around for having animation in the menus "and" animation in the slideshows involves killing the menu when the show is opened and calling the menu back from the last slide exit on each slideshow.

The simple rule of thumb is just turn off hardware acceleration for the menu unless you have animation in the menu. If you have animation in your menus then you need to exit the menu when a choice is made and call it back with the last slide of each slideshow. The details for doing this have been explained in past discussions.

Best regards,

Lin

Thanks... I just noticed the reference in Lin's Help PDF about not activating the Hardware Acceleration in the Menu.exe. But he says to have it checked in the main slideshows. So, if this is done, what happens when you have run both shows from the menu.exe. Will two Hardware Accelerations be running at the same time? What if someone runs the shows several times without exiting the program? Will there be several Hardware Accelerations running at the same time??? What might happen if this does occur??? Thanks.... Gary

[goddi]

....The simple rule of thumb is just turn off hardware acceleration for the menu unless you have animation in the menu. If you have animation in your menus then you need to exit the menu when a choice is made and call it back with the last slide of each slideshow. The details for doing this have been explained in past discussions.

Best regards,

Lin

=============================

Lin.... I didn't mean to hijack the topic but this thread brought up some good points that I did not realize before. Just one more question on the Hardware Acceleration. Does the jerkyness in the menu.exe with the HA activated happen when there is any animation or does it happen when there is extensive animation? My menu.exe only has some text that zooms in and I don't notice any problems with HA activated in the menu.exe. I have not made extensive use of animation yet in the menu.exe.

I just re-read your post, Lin, and I think I understand it better now. It would not matter how much animation you would have in the menu.exe. It is just the fact that a HA from the menu.exe would be running with the HA that would be running in a main slideshow. Would the jerkyness that one might see in the main show depend on how much animation you have in the main show (while using HA in menu.exe)? I guess that if we see the jerkyness in the main show and we would then go back and uncheck the HA in the menu.exe? Is this a way to see if you need to uncheck the HA in the menu.exe???

I just did a quick test. I unchecked the HA in my menu.exe and I did notice that the zooming in of a block of text in the menu.exe was jerky. And then, with the HA checked in the menu.exe, I did not see any jerkyness in either of the main shows where I had some text zooming in.

Thanks.... Gary