Issue with Layered Objects
June 17, 2013 12:00 AM
I am experiencing an issue with the display of layered objects. I have a title with a number of objects that are placed atop each other (for example, a footer image that has my company's logo, copyright information, etc, on top of it). When a page is opened, it takes a brief moment for the various images to display (using my previous example, the company logo shows up, followed by the footer behind it). Granted, this only occurs for a split-second, but the end result is a little sloppy looking.
This problem is exacerbated when dealing with objects that are initially hidden but set to display when certain conditions are met. I have a branching scenario where the user clicks a button to launch certain pages. Clicking this button sets a variable. Certain buttons on the following pages are initially hidden, but set to display depending on which variable has been set. In Version 11, these buttons are now taking a second to appear.
I have similar courses created in older versions of Lectora, and this issue is not present. It only seems to be apparent in Version 11.
I have not ruled out the possibility that it could be a hardware issue on my end (I am working on a ThinkPad T410 which is certainly not a top-of-the-line piece of equipment, but it performs well for me).
Has anyone experienced something similar? Are there any ways to resolve this issue?
Discussion (7)
For the layered objects with your logo, copyright info, etc. could you just combine those objects into a single image instead of having multiple objects that it needs to load?
Also, is this occuring just in preview mode? Or are these things occurring after a course has been published?
I haven't run into any issues with objects taking a second to become visible, unless our course server is giving us slower response times. However I have noticed that sometimes in preview mode, when pages load sometimes it takes a split second for any initially hidden items to hide, or any "on page show" actions to trigger.. but those processing times haven't carried over when courses are published and hosted on our server.
yeah combining somethings for interactivity wouldn't be possible, but if you can cut down on the number of objects that are needed to load on a page, that might help a bit.
since it's happening both in preview and a published course, have you been able to test your .exe on another system?
This issue exists in both preview mode or when the course is published (I publish them as executables).
While it might be possible to combine some objects into images, in other cases (like the example of interactive buttons being made visible due to certain variable settings), that does not seem viable.
I tried the .exe on a different system this morning, and the issue was still present.
I've combined a few objects, and the results are better. It still takes a split-second for the images to load, but at least now everything loads at once, rather than piecemeal. I am still curious as to what it is in Lectora 11 that caused this change. Is there a difference in how objects are being stored in memory?
I have noticed the same thing. I chose one of the design templates, and I get a brief flash on each page when published as executable. The most noticable item is the breadcrumb auto set of the title on each page.
The one thing that I did notice is that Lectora has some logic built into it now; if two similar items are selected to display at the same time (such as, after 3 seconds), lectora makes the first one 3 seconds, and the second one 2.9 seconds. So double check your times, if set to appear.
If you figure out how to get rid of the "blink", let me know. I chalked it up to the new version.
Same thing here. Do you have any news on how to improve this? Flattening the images is not a productive option.
Well, executables are still pretty bad...but I have found something that helps the screen load time. I still get a flicker - but it is not as bad as the ugly load that I was getting before.
On all of the items that load when the page loads, give them a transition of "Appear". It defaults to "None". This will make all of the items "appear" at the same time - so you don't get that staggered load of images on page show.
Now, my gripe - I wish this was at the Chapter/Section or Page level. It is not. So, you have to go to each Group/image/whatever, and set the transition in manually.
It's a pain...but it helps a little.
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