[MWForum]clickable turtle

[Wendy Petti]

It seems to me there are two issues here.  First let's look at the
turtle-resizing issue:

You cannot resize turtles using the method you describe.  (You can use
that method after surrounding a portion of the background with the
selection tool and then grabbing a corner, but not for resizing
turtles.)  The only ways to resize turtles are:
	1) with the + and - magnification tools
	2) by typing in the command center:  SETSIZE 52  [choose the value you
desire, of course]

The turtle's proportions will remain constant during resizing.  To alter
the turtle's proportions - for instance, to make a rectangle thinner -
you must use the shapes editor.

Second, let's look at the issue of the turtle's shape:

The way to ensure that clicking on California will take you to a page on
California is to create a California-shaped and California-sized turtle
which is then placed precisely on top of California.  You would end up
with 50 turtles, each wearing a state's shape, floating above the map.
While a turtle's area is rectangular, only the colored portions are
clickable.  If you keep the remaining portion of the turtle white
(clear) then it will not overlap with other states and it will not
respond to a click.

To create state-shaped turtles, use the selection tool to roughly
surround one state, and copy and paste it into a shape.  Use the shapes
editor to erase portions of other states.  You may also tweak the
dimensions of the shape so that the outer boundaries hug the state; this
is not necessary if the background is clear, but it might save a bit of
file space.

Of course you will probably want to color adjacent states in different
colors.

This will take a bit of time compared to rectangle-shaped turtles, but
the project will be really professional-looking.

You would not want the user to accidentally move the states while
clicking.  Once the state turtles are positioned precisely, you can
freeze all of their positions with one command.  Assuming it is page1,
type in the command center:

FREEZE "PAGE1

and this will freeze all elements on the page.  If you have any elements
which you prefer to be movable at that point, you can unfreeze them
individually:

UNFREEZE "BUTTON1  [or whatever]

I hope these suggestions are helpful.

Wendy Petti

> -----Original Message-----
> From: mwforum-admin@lists.mathcats.com
> [mailto:mwforum-admin@lists.mathcats.com]On Behalf Of Mikula Family
> Sent: Saturday, October 05, 2002 12:45 PM
> To: mwforum@lists.mathcats.com
> Subject: [MWForum]clickable turtle
>
>
> Justin St. Claire sent me a great project with the map of the
> US. You can
> click on a state and it will take you to that state's page.
> Each state on the
> map can have a turtle on it. It is possible to enlarge the
> turtle with the
> magnifying so it more or less covers the state. If you shift
> click on the
> turtle, it gets handles and you should be able to resize the
> window. For
> example, Justin's California turtle is a tall rectangle.
> Problem, when I
> shift click, the handles are gray not black and I can not re-shape the
> turtle's frame. How is it done??????  I tried on new projects
> so it is not a
> matter of being locked as in AppleWorks.
> Thanks from  Kate in Antioch, CA