Visionary User's Guide

Visionary User's Guide
Chapter 4: Creating Scenes

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Adding Scene Parameters

A scene parameter is a value assigned to a variable that is passed from one scene to another or set by an event action. You use scene parameters to vary the appearance of the data in a scene, according to what the parameter specifies.

For example, you can vary the appearance of a scene that displays a chart of merchandise sales. You might want to show only a single month of sales in that chart, but be able to use the same scene to show similar data for other months as well. To do this, you can use a parameter that sets the month. Or, you might want to show only the sales made to one customer. You can use a parameter that sets the customer name, and allow user actions or other triggers in the application to set that customer name and change the appearance of the scene. In this way, you can design a flexible scene in which the data changes according to a parameter you create.

Two ways that you can use scene parameters are when you create wormholes or when you define event actions. Scene parameters enable you to vary what the user sees through a wormhole or after performing an event.

For example, when you create a wormhole, you can add a scene parameter to the destination scene that changes the way the scene appears, depending on value of the parameter.

To insert a scene parameter

1. Choose Insert Parameter to display the Insert Parameter dialog box.

2. Type a parameter name in the Name text box.

3. Select a data type from the Data type list box.

4. Optionally, you can provide descriptive text in the Description text box.

5. Check the Has default value check box to set the default value of the scene parameter and type the default value.

Important: After you create a wormhole, you can modify the default parameter value by selecting the Wormhole.SceneParameter child object in the Object Inspector.

For detailed information about wormholes and event actions, see Chapter 8, "Adding Navigation Features to a Scene," and Chapter 9, "Adding Event Actions to a Scene."

Visionary User's Guide, version 1.0
Copyright © 1998, Informix Software, Inc. All rights reserved.