Seems to me that the event model for objects on a slide is wrong, especially for screencasts where the user is given manual control for moving from slide to slide...
Let's say I have two shape objects on slide 1, both animated to appear in eye-catching ways, on Slide Entry.
When user clicks "next" (right-arrow) I want to hide those two objects, then move the cursor to have it click on a link (which will open a modal dialog). Let's further assume the link to be clicked on was necessarily obscured by one of the shapes on slide 1.
As HX is now, my two options for doing this are:
(1) Include a cursor on slide 1, animated to click the desired location on Slide Exit...but to the user the cursor would appear to be clicking on one of the shapes (because they obscure what the cursor must click on), because the shapes won't disappear until slide 2 is displayed.
(2) Don't include a cursor on slide 1, but rather include it on slide 2.
- If the cursor fires on Slide Entry, the user will see the cursor move and click, but then not see the modal dialog pop up because it won't appear until slide 3 (confusing).
- Or if the cursor animation fires on Slide Exit, the user will see no activity when the slide opens (again, confusing), and will only see the cursor move and click if he or she clicks the "next" arrow a second time--as if the first click of the "next" arrow somehow was not processed. The only advantage of this arrangement would be that the cursor click will appear to be visually connected to display of the modal dialog displayed in slide 3, as it should be.
What would fix this problem is if all of the objects on a slide had both Slide Entry and Slide Exit animations. In the example I described:
When user clicks "next" (right-arrow) after slide 1 is displayed, Slide Exit actions of the the two shapes would hide them, then the cursor would click the link to open the modal dialog. Because the cursor action is a Slide Exit action, it would be followed immediately by display of slide 2 containing the modal dialog...making the cursor click and display of the dialog appear to be connected, visually.
In many situations having both entry/exit animation events for each object would also reduce the number of slides required in the Xplain.
If I've missed an HX feature or technique which would do what I want, or you see a flaw in my logic, please enlighten me.