Creating wormholes
Wormholes are
portals through which you can view a portion of another scene and
then jump to that scene. Wormholes can enhance end user's
decision-making by providing a glimpse into the destination scene.
You can create wormholes of various sizes, showing varying amounts
of the destination scene or viewpoint. Alternatively, you can create
a wormhole without an associated event action. This type of wormhole
is useful for creating navigation bars or other repeating elements.
For more information, see Using wormholes for repeated elements.
The
following figure illustrates the concept of a wormhole.
You must create the source and destination
scenes before you can create a wormhole between them.
When you create a wormhole, you can select how and whether the
user enters the wormhole. Clear the Enter wormhole when clicked with the mouse check box
in the Wormhole dialog box if:
- You want the user to select the Enter wormhole tool and then click
the wormhole to go to the destination scene.
- You do not want the user to be able to jump to the destination
scene (the wormhole only displays the destination scene).
To create a wormhole:
- Open the source scene.
- Double-click the Wormhole object on the Portals palette of the Palette Manager.
- In the Wormhole dialog box, select a destination scene and whether
the user can enter the wormhole by clicking the mouse.
- Move the wormhole where you want it to appear and size it, as
desired.
- Modify the wormhole properties, such as the zoom properties
and scroll bars, as desired. For instructions, see the following
section.
Wormhole properties
Wormholes have several properties that you might want
to modify, including:
- ZoomPct. Sets the zoom percentage of the
destination scene as viewed through the wormhole. You might want
to reduce the zoom so that you see more of the destination scene.
- SceneCenter. Sets the position of the
wormhole over the destination scene. By default, this property is
set to the center of the scene. You can change this value to display
another area of the scene. For example, you might have several charts
on one scene, but want to display only one of them through the wormhole.
- Border. Sets the style of the border around
the wormhole. You can select a border style, or select no border.
- PassThroughEvents. If set to TRUE, allows
the end user to trigger events in the destination scene, but the
wormhole itself cannot have an associated event. For example, you
can use a wormhole to display a row of navigation buttons, which
have associated events to take users to specific scenes. The user
can click button to jump to a new scene, but cannot go through the wormhole
to the navigation button scene.
Using parameters with wormholes
When you create a wormhole, you might want to pass information
captured in the source scene so that the display of the destination
scene is dynamically changed. For example, you might want to set
a global parameter based on a user action in the source scene--such
as clicking an option button--and then pass that global
parameter to the scene parameter.
See Making scenes dynamic with parameters for information
on creating a scene parameter.
When you create a wormhole, QMF Visionary Studio also creates
a child object, Wormhole.Scene Parameters, which lists the scene
parameters defined for the destination scene. To set a scene parameter
when a user enters a wormhole, select Wormhole.SceneParameters in
the Object Inspector list and set the appropriate parameter to the
value you want.
Note: To verify the default value of a scene parameter,
you can set the parameter property as its own name (for example,
=S_parameter).
The QMF Visionary Tutorial has an example of setting a scene
parameter with a wormhole.
