On Sunday 20 July 2003 10:04 am, Jeff Longland wrote:

> I'm working on an "interactive story" of sorts.  I'd like to create
> a field of text where my story will go.  I'd like to have links
> within the text that open a new window to a glossary or other
> interactive activities, maybe movie clips?  As this is my first
> real attempt outside the eToys system, I'm not too sure where to
> start.  I've played with the BookMorph a little bit, but I'm not
> sure if it meets my needs.

I'm sure that Alan will have some good suggestions here. He has been 
driving the "Active Essays" development in Squeak. Have you looked 
that the Squeakland web site?

>   My problem at this point in time is
> that I'm a little overwhelmed by everything - and I'm not quite
> sure where I should start.  How should I create the text with links
> - are there any existing morphs that would do the job? 

There is the BookMorph, the GeeMailMorph, the StackMorph, the 
Storyboard, and maybe some others I forget right now.

The GeeMailMorph is a long scrolling galley that can be set up with 
multiple columns: text in the left column and other Morphs in the 
right. When you put a Morph in a right column, it's anchored to the 
text so that when you re-flow the text, the anchor stays in place.

The BookMorph and StackMorph are page-oriented; you can drop in 
different kinds of morphs (text and other).

I don't know whether there is any easy way to trigger your embedded 
Morphs upon their becoming visible.

Tansel Ersavas (in his wonderful e-zine Squeak News) came up with a 
modification of the GeeMailMorph that would trigger embedded morphs 
when they (or their page, I forget) became visible.

I just posted a change set that will add this behavior to 
GeeMailMorph.

>  How do I
> create a link to open a "new window" that will hold an interactive
> exercise?  I have an exercise in a seperate project file (eToys)
> that I'd like to open from a link in the story - what's the best
> way to do this?  I don't necessarily have to open the other project
> - I can always bring the objects into the story project, and use
> them from there.  It's just a matter of how...

You can quickly get a project link that you can embed in a book or 
GeeMail. Go to the Objects tool (cmd-o) and look at the "Navigation" 
category.

Drag out a Project History morph. Now you can drag the little pictures 
of the projects into your book to make quick links.

Also, any Morph can be a button. There are menu items and eToys hooks 
for this.

-- 
Ned Konz
http://bike-nomad.com
GPG key ID: BEEA7EFE