CyberTracker Flash Movies
The The movies below are in Macromedia Flash format. Please make sure you have the
latest Flash player installed in order to view them. In many cases, the movies
have sound.
Play the movie
This is the primary CyberTracker help file demo and tutorial.
Play the movie
Suppose you have a large list of animal species and want to allow your users to
specify attributes about each in order to limit the number available to them. For
example, if you have a list of all the birds in North America, you may want to allow
your users to specify their color, shape and size so that selecting the final bird
doesn't involve scrolling through a list of every possible bird. An Element List
Filter allows you to do this.
The Element List control has a "Filter" property which can be set up to hide certain
elements from the list depending on the other data already added to the sighting.
For example, if your Sequence reaches your "Birds" screen from your "Color" screen,
then your bird list can be filtered according to the Element that was selected on
the Color screen.
You can filter against as many different Elements as you like - just as long as
they
are grouped in Categories. Don't forget that since Elements belonging to a
screen are automatically members of that screen's Category, you seldom need to create
a Category manually.
Each filter category allows you to specify exactly how the filter is to be applied.
The modes are:
- Subset is designed to work in the mathematical sense of subsets.
For example, suppose the filter category contained Elements "Red", "Green" and "Blue".
For the Element in question, let "Red" and "Green" be checked. Now this Element
will remain in your list if any subset of [Red, Green] is matched, i.e. [Red], [Green],
[Red, Green]. However, non-subsets will not match, e.g. [Red, Yellow] will cause
the Element to be hidden because [Red, Yellow] is not a subset of [Red, Green].
This category mode is most appropriate when you want to exclude items that have
attributes which should cause a non-match.
- Any is a much looser mode and matching in more circumstances. Essentially,
any overlap between your filter and what is contained in the sighting will cause
the Element to be shown. This category mode is most appropriate when your filter
Elements are fuzzy, e.g. "Tiny", "Small", "Medium", "Large". If you classify something
as "Tiny", you also want it to match if "Small" is selected, just in case.
- Exact means that an exact match is required. This category is useful
if you have a strict demarcation where one and only one match is appropriate.
In most cases, you can leave the matching mode as "Subset", because this provides
the most intuitive results. It is also the default.
Some other things of interest about filters:
- If you modify the categories that are used in the filter, the filter will go "out-of-date".
This just means that it needs to recalculate. You can do this by editing the filter
(clicking on the "..." button next to the Filter property) and then pressing "OK"
on the dialog.
- The Navigator control has a "Skip" button which is normally invisible. This button
allows you to skip to a specific screen in the sequence. For example, suppose you
have a filter system that is designed to filter a list of 1000 Elements and there
are 5
filtering screens. At each screen, you want to see how many Elements you have
filtered down to and potentially "skip" directly to them. It doesn't make sense
to go through 10 filter screens if after just 2 you may have limited your list to
10 Elements. In order to enable this, check the "Skip Screen" link in the "Lock
Properties" property of the Navigator control. Then, when in "Lock" mode, assign
a Screen to this property and the button will appear. This is also visible in the
"Biodiversity" sample.
Play the movie
The Element List is by far the most customizable control in CyberTracker. There
are numerous properties that require explanation:
- Attribute tells the list which image to use as an icon. To specify
the icon, click "Change Columns" while editing the "Elements" property and check
"Icon32". This will allow you to specify icons along with the Element names.
- Auto select index: if the list is a Radio list (i.e. List mode
= "Radio"), then this allows you to auto-select a particular Element. It has no
effect with other modes.
- Auto radio next: if the list is a Radio list (i.e. List mode =
"Radio"), then this allows you to advance to the next screen as soon as a selection
is made, rather than having to click the "Next" button in the Navigator.
- Columns is the number of columns the list uses. Elements are ordered
horizontally and then vertically.
- Decimals: if the list is a Number list (i.e. List mode = "Numbers"),
then this is the number of decimal places available in the numbers that are next
to each Element.
- Digits: if the list is a Number list (i.e. List mode = "Numbers"),
then this is the number of whole number digits available in the numbers that are
next to each Element.
- Item height is the height (in pixels) of each Element cell in the
list.
- List mode specifies what kind of list it is. The options are "Radio",
"Checkboxes1", "Checkboxes2" and "Numbers". "Checkboxes2" is a special icon-only
format that is used to save space on smaller screens.
- Minimum item height/width: since the dimensions of the list are
scaled according to the screen Profile, items may be shrunk too much on smaller
screens. For example, if you use 32x32 icons on a 320x240 screen, you may still
want them to be 32x32 on a 160x160 screen. In this case, use these properties to
control how narrow or short items are allowed to get.
- Radio element: if this list is a Radio list (i.e. List mode = "Radio")
and this Element is assigned, then instead of the screen result being stored as
the selected Element, instead it is stored in the Radio Element as text. For example,
if the list has Elements "Tom", "Mary" and "Harry" (Tom being selected) and the
"Radio element" is "Observer", then when the sequence advances, the output of this
screen will be "Observer"="Tom". This is useful if you have Elements that are identical
except for context, e.g. Observer 1 and Observer 2 - the name list is identical,
but you want to distinguish them.
- Retain state: if this is checked, then the list will remember the
selection/state between sightings.
- Save result: if you are creating a sequence and have a screen which
is purely navigational and you don't want this data to come out in the sighting,
you can un-check "Save Result". In this case, the screen will have no effect on
the data in the sighting. However, this will not work if you are using the screen
as a Filter screen.
Play the movie
The trick to setting up a Notebook control is that controls can be children of other
controls. In this case, that means that they are entirely contained within them.
To set up a Notebook successfully, you must change to each page of the Notebook
and add controls to it.
The relevant properties of the Notebook control are:
- Default Page Index tells the control which page is active at design
time. The first page is 1, second is 2 and so on.
- Pages is a semi-colon delimited list of page captions. For example,
setting it to "Data;List;Image;Hello" will create 4 tabs with captions "Data", "List",
"Image" and "Hello".
Play the movie
Field guides are easy to set up. The trick is that screens can display content based on the selection from a prior screen.
The relevant controls are:
- Element Container allows all child controls (inside the container) to reference the same Elements.
- Element Panel is a panel control which displays an Element name.
- Element Image is a image control which displays an image from an Element, e.g. Image1, Image2...
- Element Memo is a memo control which displays the text from an Element attribute, e.g. Text1, Text2...
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