Digital Workshop

Hi

I'm working on a project needing to display 60 text boxes 135X25 each on a page already mostly occupied by other objects, including a huge central text box into which the other items are dragged and dropped.

Currently, the 60 boxes are stacked one atop the other, leaving the viewer (1) unable to see each separately to decide which to drag and drop, and (2) unable to drag any box below the next box above it, until that higher layer box is moved. Stacking saves space but at a "cost" to functionality.

The challenge is complicated by inability to make the page larger (already 1010X700), inability to reduce the size of the large drag-to text box, inability to move other objects, which already take up most of the remaining open space.

I've experimented and found that any animation that temporarily shrinks the large text box and moves the 60 boxes from off-canvas into the page fails because these 60 boxes are all drag and drop and the large text box can accept them. If the viewer initiates this action and then drags and drops one or more of the 60, and then resets the animation, the dragged/dropped boxes disappear.

I've also tried an animation to change a layer up and down, overlapping several boxes. The very overlapping needed to conserve space results in accidental clicking of the wrong box. To get this to even work a little, the viewer would have to click an exact section of a box not overlapped by any other--not user-friendly.

I would appreciate any ideas. Ideally, the boxes would appear from off-canvas when summoned, be drag and droppable, and then be returned off-canvas when not needed.

Kind Regards,
Stephen

Hi Stephen
I think I have a grasp of what you are trying to achieve.
One way to solve your show and hide problem might be to assign a variable and have a 'cycle' button that the user can click on and view the text boxes as they cycle through.
So for example
If textbox var = 1, show textbox 1
else
hide textbox 1 //This hides the textbox just viewed
If textbox var = 2, show textbox 2
else
etc
then at the end
textboxvar +1 //Increments textbox var by 1 so the next time the button is clicked, the next textbox will show
That's how I would look at the problem
If I knew a bit more about scripting, a good script would eat a task like this.
Hope this is the answer to your problem
Cheers
Graham

Thanks Graham.

This and another lead are providing promising ideas that I'll experiment with.

Kind Regards,
Stephen

details

Hi

Thanks for these additional examples. Quite ingenious! I hope, with limited skills, that I can figure them out. I'll keep at it.

Kind Regards,

Stephen

Hi

An update (EOMC40: it appears the latest message I sent is still in my Forum outbox? Hope it goes out before long. However, below summarizes the progress.):

The solution that works allows the viewer to scroll through a stacked set of display versions of the original text boxes, and when they want to select an original (off page) one for dragging to the diagram, clicks on it's display version. The trigger then places the original box into the diagram's upper left corner, where they can further drag and drop it where needed. Seems to be working well. May need a few tweaks.

Thanks to EOMC40 and Graham for their suggestions.

Kind Regards,
Stephen