A blank screen opens.
Double click anywhere on the screen area. A Frame Properties dialogue box appears.
Frame Properties dialogue boxes are used to control the behaviour of all the resources (text, images, animations etc.) that you add to your screen.
Frame 1, the backdrop, which you have just clicked on almost always needs to be set to be a Dropzone, ie to allow other objects to be placed on top of it in browser mode. By default, the backdrop is transparent. See the note on Receives events below.
Click on the menu arrow in the Frame Type box and look down the list for Dropzone. Click on it, then click OK.
(For more details of frame types see the separate entry on the Menu screen).
Note the Always on top and Receives events tickboxes.
Always on top is normally used for buttons (text, bin, rotate, scale etc.) so that when you drag a resource to them the buttons remain visible, making it easy to correctly position the mouse pointer over the button itself.
- Receives events changes the way in which transparency is handled.
- All resources are contained in a rectangular frame. Many graphics however have an irregular shape, and parts of the area of the bounding box are therefore transparent. In a screen like Teddy for example, it is important that the transparent areas are ignored, allowing you to pick up a garment partially overlaid by another.
- In some cases however, it is necessary for a frame to respond to a click anywhere within its bounding box.
- Text can be difficult to pick up, so by default all text frames have Receives events ticked.
- Screens like Face and Body use transparent frames (create these by choosing the New blank option from the Frame menu). The frames cover part of the picture, and are programmed to play a sound when they are clicked on.
- Backdrops, by default, are transparent (but appear white on the screen). You should therefore use the Background colour option in the dialogue box to set a colour or click in the Receives Events tickbox.
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