Screenshot toggle with "max. physical size" optioin

Nothing is perfect! This is where you can post your ideas and wishes for functions you'd like to see in Help & Manual. Current version only please (H&M7).

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Mark Wilsdorf
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Screenshot toggle with "max. physical size" optioin

Unread post by Mark Wilsdorf »

I think screenshot toggles would be more universal across all display types (phone, tablet, desktop) if screenshot toggles had an additional display option like the one for Pictures, allowing the normally displayed image to be displayed at "% of page width, max is physical size".

Screenshot toggles are really helpful on small displays but not always necessary in a desktop PC browser. With the option described above, the normally displayed image of the screenshot toggle might be shown at, say 70% of page width...which on phone or tablet would serve as a target for a toggling to the full size imiage, while on a desktop PC browser the image may already be displayed at full size.

A limitation of the screenshot toggle's current "% of Document width" setting is that the default image may be shown much larger than its actual size, then when clicked on, be displayed at actual size.
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Tim Green
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Re: Screenshot toggle with "max. physical size" optioin

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Mark,

I'll pass this on. However, this shouldn't really be an issue: If you're displaying the preview image so large that it's physically possible for it to be larger than its original size then it doesn't really need to be a toggle in the first place. :)

Tip: Since you are using V3 skins you might want to try the Tap Images feature, which will get around this problem for you quite elegantly on mobile devices:

http://www.it-authoring.com/info/pp3hel ... uttap.html
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Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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Mark Wilsdorf
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Re: Screenshot toggle with "max. physical size" optioin

Unread post by Mark Wilsdorf »

Yes, that'll do fine.

Thanks.
paulororke
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Re: Screenshot toggle with "max. physical size" optioin

Unread post by paulororke »

Hi,
I have a need similar to this. I would like to be able to specify that the image thumbnail width be 600px for consistency across the manual. Currently it cannot be done,

Regards your comment:
If you're displaying the preview image so large that it's physically possible for it to be larger than its original size then it doesn't really need to be a toggle in the first place. :)
That's not always true. You are assuming reading the document with the browser maximized. Especially for technical documents I often want my windows side by side. Whatever I'm working on on one side, the documentation on the other. We do not always know whether the reader's browser window is going to be larger than the image dimensions.

So a % thumb is great when the window is small but looks terrible when the window with the thumb is maximized. I want toggled images 1:1 with my screen shot so so they look exactly the same as the Application dialogues they are presenting. It is a pet peeve of mine, dialogues in documentation that is blurry and hard to read. It defeats their purpose.

I'm adding my voice to a request to be able to use pixels to define the width of a thumbnail.

Even better would be % up to a fixed pixel width. That way of the reader does have limited space the thumb would shrink and fit (as it does now with %) but not get bigger than the defined size when there is more space available. Not sure that would be possible however.

:-)
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Tim Green
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Re: Screenshot toggle with "max. physical size" optioin

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Paul,
Even better would be % up to a fixed pixel width. That way of the reader does have limited space the thumb would shrink and fit (as it does now with %) but not get bigger than the defined size when there is more space available. Not sure that would be possible however.
That's already available. Select "% of page width, max. is physical size" and it will do exactly that. If you set it to the default of 99.9% and your image is 600px wide it will expand to 600 virtual pixels (real pixels almost never exist any more) if there is room for it but will fit otherwise.

Remember also that "page width" here is a bit of a misnomer: Really it should read "container width". If the image is in a table cell the percentage value will be relative to the size of the cell, not the page.

All that being said, the sad truth is that 1:1 pixel-to-pixel representations on computer and mobile device screens are already a thing of the past. As I said above, only virtual pixels are used almost always nowadays because of the extreme resolution of modern displays. That is why you can still even see a 600px image on a 4K monitor or or 4K smartphone with physical pixel dimensions of 4096 x 2160 pixels. The hardware pixels are automatically grouped together to form virtual pixels to give you a human-usable matrix. Writing software for this can be hugely complicated -- that was one of the biggest jobs in developing Help+Manual 7, even though it remained pretty much invisible for the user, because the result was that the program continued to look normal on modern, high-resolution displays.

In addition to this, almost everything you see on a computer display is now scaled in some way or another unless you are working on an old legacy monitor where you really do get 1:1 pixel representations. Not only are the real pixels mapped to virtual pixels, but web browsers and other programs are also scaling to taste, both themselves and through user settings, so that what you finally see is going through multiple layers of mapping and scaling.
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Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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paulororke
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Re: Screenshot toggle with "max. physical size" optioin

Unread post by paulororke »

Hi Tim,

99.9% container (page) width works exactly as I wanted! Need an "Angelic music plays" emoji, as you have found my holy grail.

Your point about 1:1 and pixels on most screens is taken, if only to point out how old I am...

Great solution. Great software. Great support.

Thanks
paulororke
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Re: Screenshot toggle with "max. physical size" optioin

Unread post by paulororke »

And now I am going insane because I cannot reliably reproduce the image toggle I want.

After your last post I went and changed the image properties to 99.9% of document width. After publishing (locally), it looks great. The image is scaled down when the space available is less than it's width, it remains at 100% when it is more. The toggle is at 100% and sharp and clear. Happy dance.

However, I do not know what settings I used that achieved this as I seem to be unable to reproduce it. I have a page now that has 2 images, one of the toggles exactly as described, the other zooms larger than 100% when there is space to do so. The XML appears to be the same for these two images, I must be looking at the wronge code as the behaviour is different. I am at a loss to get this right via the H&M GUI.
"% of page width, max. is physical size"
How do I do that? Sorry for being obtuse. I have a lot of images that I want to display this way.
EditToggle.png
The above settings still result in an image that is zoomed larger than it's width when there is space.

I know it IS possible, I did it once. :frustration:
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Tim Green
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Re: Screenshot toggle with "max. physical size" optioin

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Paul,

Sorry, but image toggles actually behave a little differently from normal images. The responsive setting is available for normal static images, but it doesn't work in quite the same way for toggles. The preview image can be set to a percentage of the document, but the physical size maximum is not used, and the settings also don't apply to the expanded toggle image. Sorry that I missed that on returning to this discussion after a while -- I was thinking about static images. :?
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Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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paulororke
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Re: Screenshot toggle with "max. physical size" optioin

Unread post by paulororke »

Hi Tim,

not to worry, I found that if I put the toggle in a single cell table I get the result I want. The lower image is in a table.

https://www.tracker-software.com/files/ ... nsions.gif

It's like being back in the 1990s! Tables for all things!

;-)
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Tim Green
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Re: Screenshot toggle with "max. physical size" optioin

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Paul,
It's like being back in the 1990s! Tables for all things!
I hear you -- with the added caveat that you now have to consider the effects on mobile devices, where tables will often break the layout... :?
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Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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