Quark Interactive Designer
Page 6

Exercise 5: Making Stuff Happen with Scripts

OK, so now we have made some things move based on a user click, but what if we wanted those things to move all by themselves? This is where scripts come in. Scripts in QuID are not the same as scripting. Scripting means programming. We are not programming. Instead, script in QuID means a series of actions — something more akin to choreography.

Scripting can make a bunch of things happen in a timed sequence, based on user actions, or on some other identifiable event — like, say, the loading of a page. For this exercise, when the page loads we will have the magenta box move right, the cyan box move left, and TheTraveler animation kick off without any intervention from us.

Choose interactive (palette) > script (tab). As you look at the palette, notice that script names are on the left side of the palette and script contents are on the right. Let's focus on the left side for a bit.

Things to Remember:
In this example we moved beyond the basic object into the
animated object, but the same rules always apply:
Name, action, and timing. This is how the entire XTensions module works.

By default, you should see the GoToNext and GoToPrevious script already loaded into the scripts panel. Right above those scripts, you should see four buttons. From the left, they are: new script, duplicate script, save as external script, and load external script.

Click the new script button. This will add a new script under the two GoTo scripts that are already in the scripts panel. In the script name box, rename the script as Page_1_Script, as shown in figure 13.

Figure 13 Click the new script button to create a new script.

Things to Remember:
Use scripts to kick off many actions in a row.
Use scripts to make actions execute automatically.
Use scripts to kick off other scripts.

Now that you have started a new script, click on the no action line in the action panel. Right below the action panel is the action list. Assign the following action as in figure 14. Of course, you'll recognize this right away, so I'll keep it short.

Figure 1. Assign the first action of the script.

Select no action in the action panel.

In the action drop-down menu below the action panel, choose object > slide. Object: Object1.  Method: To Sides. Pasteboard: Right. Timing: Duration. Seconds: 3

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