Getting Started:

Making Things Happen

adding interactions is easy with select-and-apply

You can make your publication active and interactive by adding actions to objects to make things happen. This could be to make objects appear or disappear or to animate them.

Most obviously actions are used to move from page to page, or to move from a menu to the specific page. Actions can also be used to control sound and video and to track answers and keep score.

Triggers

The first step in making things happen in your publication is to decide what makes it happen - what will make your action start. This is called the "trigger". It may be a trigger caused by some interaction from the user such as a Left Mouse Click or a Keypress but you can also trigger actions On Show which means they will happen automatically when an object appears on your page.

Click to view the full list of Triggers

Once you have chosen the trigger you can choose an action or a series of actions which will occur when that event is triggered.

There are several categories of actions available such as Audio/Video, Scoring, Animation and each contains a range of relevant actions including Play Video, Stop Sound, Launch Browser, Show, Hide, Go to page etc. Click to view the complete list of Actions.

You can set up a range of actions and they can be designed to run one after another or you can put them into a Simultaneous Action group to make them all happen at once. There is also a Delay action to pause activity for however long you want to set.

Timelines

For complicated combinations of actions or where you want to ensure you synchronise a range of actions and events you can use a timeline where individual actions can be positioned visually in respect of the publication time and each other.

Click for further details - Timelines

Even Complex Actions Are Easy

Once you have chosen the action you simply chose a series of settings from the relevant dialog and then apply.

More complex actions (often called functions) are also available using the Programming tab where you can set up simple programming-type constructs without any scripting or special skills. This includes such as loops or conditional actions (for example "if...then" actions or "select...case" actions. And you still choose the options from a series of controls so no scripting is required - unless you want it...

Going Further with OpusScript

If you do have programming skills and need even more control and functionality then Opus Pro provides a fully-featured scripting language and connectivity to external DLLs for all the development power you need for a whole range of applications. But because Opus has so much functionality built in you only need to write the functions you need for specific purposes and projects can be completed more quickly and more cost-effectively.

Getting Started

Opus Pro and Opus Creator Reference - Adding Interactivity