What Went Wrong?


Why was page 1 displayed whenever the user clicked and dragged the slider control? Well, there it is. Plain as day. A conditional interaction set to activate when Dragging@"slider" is true. Many folks might be asking themselves just what I was up to including that conditional interaction in the first place. Here's why:

You may notice that when this example file is run and the user draggs the slider mechanism back and forth, the page number (presented in a box to the right of the slider) updates dynamically as the slider is dragged. When I initially built this application, the page number only updated when the user let go of the slider. This is hardly useful for navigating. I tried many things to solve the problem. Each thing I tried I was sure would work -- but none did. I finally decided to FORCE the number to update as the user was dragging by creating the Dragging@"slider" conditional, and placing a SyncPoint(0)/SyncWait(.0001) combination in the calc icon attached to the interaction.

This failed too.

I belatedly realized that the expression I placed in the display icon was at fault. What I placed in the display icon to show the page associated with the current slider position was:

What I should have place in the display icon was: This forces Authorware to continuously evaluate and update the expression, and eliminates the need for a Dragging@"slider" interaction (which didn't work anyway!) Naturally I forgot to remove the Dragging@"slider" conditional from the example before I zipped and posted it. Wouldn't look like such an idiot otherwise, eh?

Well the new Slider-based Navigation sample file is now posted for you to download. It works much better now so if you have a copy of the old one, feel free to download the improved version (or simply remove the Dragging... conditional from the copy you have).

Warmest regards,
Mike

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