Using the Rollover Tool

On the Tools toolbar is the Rollover tool $image\Icon_Object_Rollover.jpg$ . This tool allows you to create a group of objects that will automatically change appearance when the user interacts with them. Below is an illustration of a Rollover object containing an Image and Text object and the four possible appearances you can set:

$image\Rollover_Example_Default.jpg$	$image\Rollover_Example_Over.jpg$	$image\Rollover_Example_Pressed.jpg$	$image\Rollover_Example_Disabled.jpg$
Default	Mouse Over	Mouse Pressed	Disabled

A Rollover object is made up of four Frame objects, as follows:

A Default frame – this frame and its contents appears when the user enters the page and when none of the other frames described below are active.
A Mouse Over frame – this frame and its contents appears when the user moves the mouse over the Rollover object.
A Mouse Pressed frame – this frame and its contents appear when the user presses the Rollover object.
A Disabled frame – this frame and its contents appear when an object has been disabled (i.e. it is inactive). This normally occurs when a Disable Object action is activated.

Each frame can contain images, vectors, text, buttons or any combination of objects but only one frame is visible to the user at a time. Furthermore, as you create a Rollover only one of the Frame objects is displayed in the Opus Editor at a time, this is useful when editing the contents of each frame.

Note:
The Object States panel in the Properties dialog provides a similar feature. However, with the Object States you can only change one object at a time – with the Rollover object you can have as many objects in a frame as you like and some (or all) of them can be changed.

To add a Rollover to a page:

Draw a Rollover object on the page as described in Adding Object to a Page. This will create a new Frame Set containing an outer Rollover frame and four Frame objects named: Default, Mouse Over, Mouse Pressed and Disabled.

Note:
The object’s Properties dialog box will open showing the Rollovertab. This tab allows you to remove the Mouse Over, Mouse Pressed and Disabled frames from the Rollover object if not required. Please note, you cannot remove the Default frame – see Rollover tab for more information.

The outer Rollover object is also a frame. However, you cannot add objects to the outer Rollover frame, only to the inner frames (e.g. Default frame) but you can change the properties of the outer frame, such as the background colour.
To open the Properties dialog for the Rollover, select the Rollover icon in the Objects tab of the Page Organiser, right-click on the icon to open the right-click menu and select the Properties option.

Note:
Any changes you make in the Properties dialog for the Rollover object will appear in the inner frames (e.g. Default frame). For example, if you change the background colour of the Rollover frame to blue, then all the inner frames will have the background colour blue unless you specifically change the inner frames background to a different colour.

The inner frames work in exactly the same way as any other Frame object in your publication, that is, they can be used as a container for other objects.

To add contents to a frame:

Click on the name of the frame within the Rollover object in the Objects tab of the Page Organiser, the frame will be highlighted like so $image\Object_View_Frame.jpg$ , other frames will be greyed out like so $image\Object_View_Frame_Grey.jpg$ .
With the frame selected, click on the tool in the Tools toolbar that you want to draw in the frame as described in Adding Object to a Page.
Repeat point 2 above for each new object you want to add to a frame.
When you want to add objects to a different frame, repeat the steps from point 1 above.

Note:
If each frame in the Rollover object contains the same objects, it may be quicker to create one frame with all of its contents and then copy the objects and insert them into the other frame. Then all you will need to do is change the specific contents of each object in the other frame.

The Rollover object is often used for two specific purposes:

as an easy method of creating rollover buttons that change their appearance when the user moves over them or presses them
to create Tool Tips – a popular feature in training publications and easily achieved by adding a Text object to the Mouse Over frame.