Sometimes I find that it is quicker and easier to do some things in Authorware by going down a side road. For instance, if I have a long Test expression on the screen, such as {Test(Condition, "Some text", "")}{Test(~Condition, "Some other text", "")}, usually the expression is far bigger than the area allotted to it. Most of the time, this means that the text either goes off the bottom of the screen or overlays something that makes it unreadable.

One solution to this problem is to resize or move the text area until you can see everything you need to see. But then you have to resize or move it back where it came from. What a pain! I have found that you can temporarily set the text to Scrolling and give it an opaque background just long enough to edit the Test text, then uncheck scrolling and change the Mode back to Transparent.

If you've ever worked with KO's or functions, you're probably aware of how tedious it can be to write something like

Repeat with X@"my really long icon title" to Linecount(text@"my really long icon title")

--etc.

I finally realized that you could use a short icon title temporarily, then change the icon title after your code is in place. All the icon references will change to the longer icon title when the icon is renamed. So your code would start out more like:

Repeat with X@"me" to Linecount(text@"me")

--etc.

Then it would change to the longer title after you are finished typing your code.

If you use a Target response set to "Accept any Object," it will set all icons on screen to Movable unless you explicitly set them not to be movable. This includes your background and other graphics.

Remember, if you need to make the same change to a lot of icons, you can use Edit>Change properties. In this case, you'd set the Calculation property to append Movable := False at the end of any existing attached Calculations. This will create an attached calculation on icons that did not have one before. If you missed a few icons the first time, you can use Edit>Change Properties again to change the ones you missed.

I'll be out of town on business next Friday, so I will not be putting out a Tip next week. Tip of the Week will resume the next week, however.

Have you ever wanted to try your hand at developing CBT for an LMS, but could not afford tens of thousands of dollars for the LMS? Integrity eLearning has recently announced their WBT Manager Developer Edition. This is a fully functional LMS, with just two Student Licenses. This is a giant step forward for allowing the Authorware community to familiarize itself with LMS integration. IELearning's Carol Fallon has also put out a book, E-Learning Standards: A Guide to Purchasing, Developing and Deploying Standards-Conformant E-Learning, which should also give us all a "leg up."