Wait after last animation

HelpXplain is the exciting new animated infographics and screencast tool that integrates with Help+Manual.

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anders_g
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Wait after last animation

Unread post by anders_g »

Say I want to show some objects on a slide, one after the other, with animations and delays. This works fine. But I want the transition to next slide to wait a few seconds after the last animation has finished. I have tried setting a LONG time for the slide and experimented with exit animantions, but not quite got it to work. I guess what I am looking for is the concept of a "empty" animation - not showing anything but just waiting the desired amount of time. Guess I am overlooking something you have already implemented, but I can't find it. Please help 8)
/Anders
Anders Gustavsson
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Alexander Halser
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Re: Wait after last animation

Unread post by Alexander Halser »

This request has been aired a couple of times. We will implement this in one of the next updates.

The only question so far is, where exactly?
Does it make sense to add a delay-before-advance to slides?
Or would it be more versatile to have a delay-after for each animation? You could add this to the last exit-animation of a slide. Or is that too confusing?
I have tried setting a LONG time for the slide and experimented with exit animantions
This works with entry animations, but not with exit animations. The slide's display time (in autoplay-mode) is not exact, it can be longer if the entry animations of the slide exceed the display time. Either because the animations take that long by design or because the animations take longer than anticipated because the browser is too slow. So the display time of a slide varies. But in any case, the exit animations add to the display time: they are played when "advance-to-next" command comes, whether in autoplay mode or when the user clicks the "Next" button.

Exit animations always happen right before the slide advances to the next slide. That's why the display time of a slide does not change this and you cannot accomplish your delay with a longer display time.
I guess what I am looking for is the concept of a "empty" animation - not showing anything but just waiting the desired amount of time.
The workaround for the time being is to place a dummy object (e.g. a simple rectangle) somewhere on the slide and assign a simple "show/hide" animation with the desired delay. You can drag the object outside the slide's display rectangle to make it invisible.
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Martin Wynne
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Re: Wait after last animation

Unread post by Martin Wynne »

Alexander Halser wrote:The workaround for the time being is to place a dummy object (e.g. a simple rectangle) somewhere on the slide and assign a simple "show/hide" animation with the desired delay. You can drag the object outside the slide's display rectangle to make it invisible.
A dummy text object containing only a space character also works, and doesn't need to be outside the frame.

cheers,

Martin.
anders_g
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Re: Wait after last animation

Unread post by anders_g »

Thanks, Alexander and Martin, for ideas!

I have been contemplating your alternatives, Alexander, but I can't really make up my mind about it. Either would work fine I guess.

An idea that came up was if it would be useful (or even possible) to have two animations on the same object: one in and one out (you might imagine an image rotating in, wait a second and then rotate out. This would make room for an "after delay" time that could be useful for more than just "doing nothing".... Even if this idea is not implemented now the time schema of an after-delay time would fit nicely for future developments.

Thanks anyway for a nice program!

/Anders
Anders Gustavsson
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Martin Wynne
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Re: Wait after last animation

Unread post by Martin Wynne »

Hi Anders,

I'm also waiting for a two-stage animation. Specifically move cursor...wait...click, which seems to me to be essential to replicate a video on mouse activity. So that a user has a chance to read the button or menu text before it is clicked and vanishes. Which in many cases would remove the need for a separate callout. I posted this request in the beta testing, but it didn't get followed up.

cheers,

Martin.
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Tim Green
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Re: Wait after last animation

Unread post by Tim Green »

Martin Wynne wrote:I'm also waiting for a two-stage animation.
Two-stage animations are on the list, they just didn't make it into the initial release. Some things had to give. However, there is a hacky little trick that you can use to achieve at least some kinds of two-stage animations. This is possible because you can apply one animation to an element on its own, and another animation to a group of elements that also include elements that already have their own animations.

So what you do is apply one animation to the individual element, then group it with another element (an invisible one, if necessary) and apply the second animation to that. For example, you can use that to make an element both appear and disappear, or appear and then move, and so on, in a single slide. 8)
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Martin Wynne
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Re: Wait after last animation

Unread post by Martin Wynne »

Thanks Tim.

That and the amazing Spotlight demo which Alexander posted would make HelpXplain just perfect. :)

cheers,

Martin.
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Alexander Halser
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Re: Wait after last animation

Unread post by Alexander Halser »

After thinking about it... I like Anders' idea best. We could introduce a "wait" animation, that doesn't do anything but pause for the duration. That kind of "animation" could be assigned to any object on the slide.

Would you consider it a strange thing to assign an animation that does exactly nothing but wait to an object that you don't even want to be animated?

It would certainly eliminate the requirement for a dummy object, so that's an improvement.

In the light of what we plan for future development, it makes sense. The object animation stack is internally designed in a way to allow several sequential animations for an object. Both for slide entry and exit. We haven't enabled it yet, because with more than one animation per object, the animations will become unmanageable the way they are handled at the moment. We are aware of that. What we need is a timeline, where you can see and edit not just object animations, but also slide display times and transitions.

I predict that with voice-overs it will become painfully real, that we need a timeline. But that's another construction site that will take a month, for there is no ready-to-use control that we could implement for that. We need to develop that UI control from scratch.
Alexander Halser
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anders_g
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Re: Wait after last animation

Unread post by anders_g »

Alexander Halser wrote:Would you consider it a strange thing to assign an animation that does exactly nothing but wait to an object that you don't even want to be animated?
No :D

Your reasoning sounds good!

/Anders
Anders Gustavsson
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Martin Wynne
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Re: Wait after last animation

Unread post by Martin Wynne »

Hi Alexander,

I'm not too clear how a "wait" animation would provide what I was looking for? I wanted to see in an xplain what happens in a video -- the mouse cursor moves over a button, there is a pause while the user reads what is on the button, and then it is clicked. That seems to require a two-stage modification to an existing animation, rather than a new one.

However, your brilliant new spotlights could be an alternative. If a spotlight moved over the cursor position on entry, taking the users attention away from the previous cursor, the cursor could move and click over it on exit, as now.

Could you modify the screencast function to do that? Automatically create a spotlight and a cursor? Then the existing animations are sufficient. Move-in on the spotlight on entry, move+click on the cursor on exit. If the spotlight could move from its position on the previous slide, even better.

cheers,

Martin.
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Tim Green
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Re: Wait after last animation

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Martin,

What you're describing here is simply moving closer and closer to a video. I think if you need something like that you really need to be working in Camtasia or Captivate. The paradigm in HelpXplain is different, and it naturally comes with its own limitations. The paradigm of Camtasia and Captivate has other limitations. You need to decide which ones you prefer to live with. As always in life: There's no free lunch and you pays your money and makes your choice. 8)

I think we've discussed this subject enough now so please, let's close this thread. The issues discussed are clear to the developers and will be considered, but more discussion isn't going to lead anywhere at this point.
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Martin Wynne
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Re: Wait after last animation

Unread post by Martin Wynne »

Tim Green wrote:Hi Martin, What you're describing here is simply moving closer and closer to a video. I think if you need something like that you really need to be working in Camtasia or Captivate. The paradigm in HelpXplain is different, and it naturally comes with its own limitations. The paradigm of Camtasia and Captivate has other limitations. You need to decide which ones you prefer to live with. As always in life: There's no free lunch and you pays your money and makes your choice. 8)

I think we've discussed this subject enough now so please, let's close this thread. The issues discussed are clear to the developers and will be considered, but more discussion isn't going to lead anywhere at this point.
Hi Tim,

OK. But you are the ones claiming that an Xplain can replace a video, so it would seem to make sense to get it as close as possible to similar functionality.

My suggestion of a spotlight on entry is not at all like a video, and uses the HX functionality.

Please not Camtasia :( -- that really is stressful to use. I've tried them all over the years -- my preferences now are FlashBack Recorder for screen video, and PicturesToExe for slideshow presentations. But HX is much more fun than either. :)

cheers,

Martin.
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Tim Green
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Re: Wait after last animation

Unread post by Tim Green »

But you are the ones claiming that an Xplain can replace a video, so it would seem to make sense to get it as close as possible to similar functionality.
There's a difference between being able to replace a video for what you want to achieve and actually being a video.
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Kimberly Hitchens
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Re: Wait after last animation

Unread post by Kimberly Hitchens »

Wait:

This might explain something that has had me pulling my hair out for the last few hours. Are you guys saying that I cannot set the duration of display, for a slide? At all?

I've created a very detailed screencast--a bit different than what you're probably expecting, with "click here" and all that, because I wanted to use it to (maybe, finally) get my customers to read certain instructions that we give them. I've spent the last 5 hours on it.

But, when I play it, it's wildly too fast. I mean, NOBODY could read the text boxes, not even the Flash. I have tried everything to force the slide to take longer. (Admittedly, I never thought about grossly extending the length of the animations, but that's not what I wanted. I wanted the slide to pause whilst read.) I've looked all through Help, to make the duration a different period, etc. and found NOTHING about setting slide duration.

Am I simply missing something obvious, or is this not possible? Is it seriously not possible to set a given slide to display for 10 seconds, instead of the duration of the animations? is that what I understand the gist of this thread to be? So...what, I have to turn off autoplay for the entire thing? Is that even possible? (If this is all correct, I've just wasted my entire day off; my users won't click through it. That's the problem I'm already having. I don't need MORE d*mn stuff that they won't read or use...)

If this is right--I'm sorry, but in a million years, I would not have expected this.

Hitch
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Martin Wynne
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Re: Wait after last animation

Unread post by Martin Wynne »

Kimberly Hitchens wrote:Are you guys saying that I cannot set the duration of display, for a slide? At all?
Hi Kimberley,

You need to deselect the Autoplay option for the slide. It will then wait for the user to read the texts. The user clicks the Next Slide icon or the Play icon when they are ready to resume the playback.

You can see such an Xplain at: http://templot.com/companion/catch_points.php

Or you can set a minimum slide display time for each slide, if you don't want users to have to make clicks. The slide will display longer if needed to complete the animations.

Select the slide, and then make these settings for that slide:
hx_autoplay.png
cheers,

Martin.
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