| Version 6 (modified by danvisel, 16 years ago) (diff) |
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2.2. Halos and HUDs
Interacting with Sophie is done with halos and HUDs. Halos are little icons that show up around things in Sophie when you select them. They stay on the screen until you click somewhere else in Sophie. Generally, these halos can be clicked to open a HUD; a few work slightly differently. HUD is short for head-up display. It’s a little window that opens up showing you different things that you can do with whatever you have selected. You can drag a HUD around by clicking on its background and dragging.
Different things in Sophie have different kids of halos. If you select an image on a Sophie page, you’ll see a frame appearance halo, which lets you put images, backgrounds, or drop shadows on the image; a frame properties halo, which lets you control where and how big the image is; a link halo, which lets you turn the image into a link; and an anchor halo, which lets you attach the image to a text flow. If you select a word of text, you’ll see the character halo, which lets you set the font settings for just that word; the paragraph halo, which lets you control how the paragraph that word is in appears; and the link halo, which lets you make that word into a link. Some halos are very specific: you won’t see the link color halo unless you’ve selected a frame that’s a link or text that’s part of a link.
Generally the most used settings in a HUD are near the top of the window. Sometimes you’ll see a downward facing arrow at the bottom of a HUD. These arrows can be clicked to unfold more functionality in the HUD (and clicked again to hide the functionality). Some HUDs have several of these arrows.
Besides halos, Sophie frames have a few basic controls that appear when the frame is selected. The orange edges that appear can be dragged up and down or back and forth to change the frame’s size and shape. Corners can also be dragged to change the shape of the frame. There’s a little orange circle that appears in the center of the frame; this can be dragged to move the frame around the page. (This is especially important in text frames: if you click other places inside the text frame, Sophie will assume that you want to put your cursor in text.) And finally, there’s a little green square in the upper right corner of the frame. If you drag this, you can rotate the frame.
The page halo and HUD
