Move velocity?

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

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Martin Wynne
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Move velocity?

Unread post by Martin Wynne »

When an object moves, we can set the duration for the move, in seconds.

Can I suggest an option to set the velocity, i.e. in pixels per second? HX could then calculate the duration from the distance to be moved.

Setting the velocity would give a more consistent feel to the presentation. At present, to keep the cursor moving at a constant speed it is necessary to calculate separately a duration for each move according to the distance moved, which is tedious and liable to error. Otherwise you have a situation where a short move is far too slow, and a long move across the full screen is too fast. The result is that the presentation appears disjointed. The same applies to the chained spotlights.

cheers,

Martin.
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Alexander Halser
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Re: Move velocity?

Unread post by Alexander Halser »

Use the Interpolation setting to change the velocity. Both Quadratic and Cubic start off quickly and slow down at the end.
to calculate separately a duration
If you edit cursor objects manually, then yes. When you create a screencast, HelpXplain calculates the cursor animation duration based on the distance traveled.
Alexander Halser
Senior Software Architect, EC Software GmbH
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Martin Wynne
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Location: West of the Severn, UK

Re: Move velocity?

Unread post by Martin Wynne »

Alexander Halser wrote:Use the Interpolation setting to change the velocity. Both Quadratic and Cubic start off quickly and slow down at the end.
Thanks Alexander. I'm already using cubic for everything -- I would like to see it as the default. :)

But it doesn't solve the problem of needing a different duration according to distance moved, for all objects.

cheers,

Martin.
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Tim Green
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Re: Move velocity?

Unread post by Tim Green »

Hi Martin,

I've experimented with something like this for the scroll animation I use for anchors, to change the scroll duration based on the number of pixels traveled to the anchor on the page. I thought it would be a good idea but it doesn't really work very well, and tends to look weird. In almost all cases, the single duration looked better, and it feels intuitively right that the scroll moves faster when there is more distance to travel. The bottom line here, at least for that, is that KISS (Keep It Simple) is still the best approach -- and with HX animations you can have a different duration for each animation anyway.
Regards,
Tim (EC Software Documentation & User Support)

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