Introduction

Scenes are similar to the concept of a slide in Microsoft PowerPoint. Navigating from one scene to another in a running experience is accomplished through the use of navigation actions, such as Forward, Backward, and Go to scene.

The order of scenes in the Scenes panel has no relation to the order in which an audience may encounter them. The one exception is if you choose to use the Next and Previous actions as these particular actions are designed to follow the order of scenes in the Scenes panel.

The contents of a scene can be placed into either an experience layer or a scene layer. There is no limit to the number of layers a scene can support.

Scenes can also be organized into sequences to help an experience designer organize their work.

Setting the scene background

The background of a scene can be set to a color, an image, a video or - on Windows PCs - rendered completely transparent.

For details about the various options for creating a scene background, see this article.

Specifying the startup scene

The startup scene is the scene that will first appear when running an experience in Player. (Composer's Play Mode will begin with whichever scene was on display in Edit Mode.)

To specify the startup scene, use one of two methods:

• Method #1
  • At the top of Composer, open the Project menu and select "Show experience properties"
  • On the Behavior tab, use the "Startup scene" property to specify which scene should appear first.
    
• Method #2
  • In the Scenes panel, right-click the thumbnail for the scene you wish to make the startup scene. In the pop-up menu that appears, choose the option "Set as startup scene".

The startup scene will be indicated in the Scenes panel by the presence of a small icon:

Multi-selecting design elements in a scene

Assets and collections in a scene can be multi-selected. Multi-selected items can be aligned, distributed, grouped, rotated, resized and bulk edited as well as the traditional copy, cut, move and delete.

There are a variety of ways to multi-select items in a scene:

• Click Ctrl+a to select every item in the scene
• Left-click-and-drag your mouse to lasso all the items you wish to select
• Hold down the Shift or Ctrl key while left-clicking each item you wish to select

You also have the option of multi-selecting items in the Scene Content panel using the Shift-and-hold or Ctrl-and-hold method described above. use Shift-and-hold to select a list of items; use Ctrl-and-hold to select individual items.

Locking design elements

All items in a scene can be locked. If locked, assets and collections cannot be selected and manipulated while in Edit Mode. (Selection can still be made in the Scene Structure panel.) Locking is useful if you wish to limit changes to your experiences when sharing them with colleagues and/or third parties who will be using Composer.

To lock an item in a scene, select one or more items in the scene or Scene Content panel and then click the lock icon found to the left of one of those items in the Scene Content panel.

Properties

Appearance Properties

• Background Appearance   defines what will be used as the scene's background
  • Color   use the revealed Color property to define a background color for the scene
  • Image   use the revealed Image property to select an image for the background and the "Effects" section to manipulate that image.
    • For more about the "Fill Behavior" property, see this article.
  • Video   use the revealed Video property to select a video that will run in the background and the "Effects" section to manipulate that image.
    • For more about the "Fill Behavior" property, see this article.
    • "Volume" and "Play loop" properties also appear.
  • Transparent render the background transparent. Details are here.
• Item Appearance   defines the background appearance of the Scene: Property available on Layers since IntuIFace 6.0 and above.
  • Item shadow effect   defines the shadow effect around assets in the Scene (For more about asset shadows, see this page).
    • None   items do not have a shadow
    • Rectangle   a rectangular shadow is displayed
    • Drop shadow   a drop shadow is displayed

Behavior Properties

• Reset all asset properties   when selected, every time a user leaves and re-enters this scene - or whenever this scene's Reload action is called - all assets will be reset to their original property settings.
• Create an item when a snapshot is taken   when selected, a snapshot taken via the drawing tools will result in the creation of an Image asset containing the snapshot

The following properties are located at the scene level in Intuiface Version 5 but were moved to the layer level in Version 6

• Show usage animation   if true, each pinnable asset in the scene - when pinned - will briefly display a graphic illustrating how to interact with it. For a Video asset, this property - when true - will cause display of the play or pause icon when it is pinned.
• Background filter on maximize   defines the way items in the background are displayed when an asset is maximized:
  • None   no background filter is applied
  • Hide items   background items are not visible
  • Fade items   background items are faded
  • Blur items   background items are blurred
• Item Soft move
  • Allow soft move   allows content items to come to rest gracefully when they are moved
  • Soft move linear speed   defines the soft move speed when items are moved horizontally, vertically or diagonally
  • Soft move angular speed   defines the soft move speed when items are rotated
• Item behavior
  • On enter -> Reset all asset properties   when selected, each time the Scene is displayed, all assets will be reset to their initial set of properties defined in the Composer.

Tools Properties

Drawing tools

• Show drawing tools   if true, a button will be displayed in the Scene at runtime (or preview) so that the user will be able to open the drawing tools. The size and location of the button can be modified with corresponding properties below.
• Available colors   add, delete, reorder and modify the colors that will be available in the drawing palette at runtime.
• Available widths   add, delete, reorder and modify the stroke widths that will be available in the drawing palette at runtime. You are limited to a maximum of 4 widths in the drawing tool.
• Show drawing grid   if selected, a grid will be displayed when the drawing mode is activated
• Show drawing mode label   if selected, text will be displayed on the upper left corner of the Scene while in drawing mode.
• Drawing mode label text   text that will be displayed in the upper left corner of the Scene, while in drawing mode, if the previous option is selected.
• Erase All label text   confirmation text displayed after the user presses the Erase all button in the drawing palette while in drawing mode.
• Drawing mode mask   set color and transparency of the overlay displayed while in drawing mode.
• Drawing tool location, X   defines the X coordinate for the upper-left corner of the Drawing Tools button
• Drawing tool location, Y   defines the Y coordinate for the upper-left corner of the Drawing Tools button
• Drawing tool icon width   defines the width of the Drawing Tools button
• Drawing tool icon height   defines the height of the Drawing Tools button

NOTE: For the list of available Drawing Mode actions, see the page How to Work with the Drawing Tool.

Text Input Keyboard properties

Use these properties to configure the appearance of keyboards put onscreen by either the Web Browser asset or the Text Input. This setting will be applied to all scene layers in the same scene.

Deselect the property Use experience keyboard style to override the Text input keyboard settings at the experience level. If deselected, the following properties appear.

• Background color   color and opacity of the keyboard background
• Allow move   toggle whether user can move the keyboard around the display
• Allow rotate   toggle whether the user can rotate the keyboard; useful for table-mounted displays
• Allow close   toggle whether the user can manually close the keyboard
• Show/Hide with animation   toggle whether the keyboard should display and hide with a fade effect
• Center, x coordinate   on-screen location of the keyboard on the x axis, in pixels
• Center, y coordinate   on-screen location of the keyboard on the y axis, in pixels
• Scale factor   size of the keyboard

Triggers and Actions

See Triggers Overview and Actions Overview to get details of common triggers and actions shared by all assets

Triggers

• Gestures

  • Detects a gesture

• Scene

  • Is being entered   Triggered before visual elements are rendered so typically only used to call interface asset actions. To use with visual elements, precede the first action with a short delay - e.g. 0.1 seconds - to permit visual elements to render.
  • Has been entered   Triggered after visual elements are rendered (usually 1 second after the Scene has been entered)
  • Is being left
  • Has been left

• Snapshot

  • Snapshot is taken

• Tags

  • Detects an input tag
  • Detects a visual tag down
  • Detects a visual tag move
  • Detects a visual tag up

• Timers

  • Has been active
  • Has been inactive
  • Timer has elapsed

• Touch

  • Is double tapped
  • Is tapped

Actions

• Drawings

  • Change stroke
  • Turn drawing mode on
  • Turn drawing mode off
  • Erase all drawings
  • Turn drawing mode off
  • Turn erase mode off
  • Turn erase mode on

• Scene

  • Create asset
  • Reload
  • Hide asset
  • Show asset

• Snapshot

  • Take snapshot

• Text input keyboard

  • Rotate by
  • Rotate to
  • Move by
  • Move to

• Visibility and effects

  • Apply background effect