Sorry first post for ssp and I'm posting it here

Maybe it's just a purposeful change over ss as the help files do mention the topic of rendering specifically for ssp but it still seems odd to me.

Also please 'bear with me' as I have literally used ssp for only about 20 minutes so shouldn't really post yet until I have some proper knowledge of it but I need to get things when they are 'fresh' in my little brain.

Loading one of my WD pages ( thats works perfectly is ss as well ) it all looks just fine. Using the 'preview tab' ( we'll get to that in a minute! ) next to the working window, it all looks fine. Preview it in IE or Opera though and it get's 'messed up' Viewed in FF and it's perfectly fine. The good/bad images are below.

Basically as you see the white boxes have the bottom missing off them. Now If I click 're render' then they show correctly but why should I have to do that when they are ok in ss & wd ?

If it IS correct what is going on then can I check re render on all the same images at the same time rather than about 1000+ separate images that is going to irritate me rather

I did see in the help files you can make a global setting of re render on or off, yet in typical help files 'fasion'it doesn't go on to tell you how, well not in that particular article ! I realize I couldn't do that anyway because of the 'gif' transparency issue but I was just curious.

How it Should look
Duff !

Next 'Problem' Sorry if anything has been covered before, just ignore it !

The preview ( tab Not browser one ) is pointless for me as it doesn't show the animations at their correct speed, if I load a large cursor page they are literally all stopped. To me there is no point in previewing something if it doesn't give you a correct representation of what you are going to see, hence that 'preview tab' is now gone !

I'm very glad to see that cursor 'jumping' to the center of the page 'issue' has gone in ssp

There is a couple of other things but I forget, as the man says 'I'll Be Back'


Andy

Andy,

For your image problem, try Options->Project Options General tab, and uncheck the "Include Background" box.

As for the preview tab; this uses the Opera browser. You have a choice via the Options->Preview Options Preview tab of using the stand-alone version or the built-in mini-browser. I think the mini-browser still has a few bugs, so if you are not using the stand-alone version, check the box and restart SS-Pro for the change to take effect. If your page does not preview properly using the stand-alone Opera version, then you can be assured that any Opera users are going to see the same problem when they visit your site.

Hi Larry

quote:

For your image problem, try Options->Project Options General tab, and uncheck the "Include Background" box.

Made no difference at all, the only Interesting thing though was if what I said above above about it looking wrong in Opera was correct it now looks ok in Opera and still in ff but still duff in IE. But then for reasons given below I have just updated opera but so maybe that means nothing.

quote:

As for the preview tab; this uses the Opera browser. You have a choice via the Options->Preview Options Preview tab of using the stand-alone version or the built-in mini-browser. I think the mini-browser still has a few bugs, so if you are not using the stand-alone version, check the box and restart SS-Pro for the change to take effect.

First off I got an error about Opera crashing ssp so I had to update Opera ! After updating and then changing to 'stand alone', closing and re starting opera the problem is the same, the animations are barely moving.

quote:

If your page does not preview properly using the stand-alone Opera version, then you can be assured that any Opera users are going to see the same problem when they visit your site.

Well If I view my site on my pc using Opera it appears absolutley as it should and NOT as it appears in the ssp standalone preview browser. Maybe you could see what it looks like in Opera for me please Larry.

Thanks
Andy

Looks like there may be a bug here.

I have been trying to decode the components you have: I looked at one on your Cartoon page and this is what I see:

blank frame.gif: 61x61 -- a black bordered rectangle with a white inside

Blank.gif: 60x60 -- a completely blank borderless white rectangle

Cactus.gif: an animated gif comprising the central part of the object set

Lefties1.gif : 10x10 The little red letter 'L' in the bottom left.

All images are in their orignal form -- Web Dwarf has not re-rendered them. The browser rescales Blank.gif down to 59x59 so superimposed on the black frame, it has an even one pixel blank border all round.

(As an aside, I would question why you have two blank rectangles. Why not dispense with the Blank.gif altogether and use the white of the blank frame as your background? This would save around 700 images with respect to the 2500 image limit.)

There is a known bug, affecting small images, soon to be fixed -- this stretches your Lefties L. There may also be a bug that shifts small images down, affecting only IE.

The remaining problem that I see from your examples is that the green background spills into the bottom of your rectangle It seems that in your case SS Pro may be re-rendering something that doesn't need to be re-rendered and screwing up in the process.

Needless to say, I haven't been able to recreate this with my simple 1-off example. Can you?

Bruce,

You never fail to amaze me with your in-depth analysis of other member’s problems.

Without you (or Larry and Roma), this forum would not be as helpful as it is.

Well done

quote:

You never fail to amaze me with your in-depth analysis of other member’s problems.

I reckon Bruceee & Larry are obviously the 'Investigator' types and like to get stuck into a tricky problem. When I used to be an Auto Electrician I used to love a Really nasty intermittent fault to solve, I'd have trouble changing a headlight bulb now !!

quote:

(As an aside, I would question why you have two blank rectangles. Why not dispense with the Blank.gif altogether and use the white of the blank frame as your background? This would save around 700 images with respect to the 2500 image limit.)

Obviously you are quite correct as normal Bruceee but the reason behind this ( apart from laziness) is when I started the site, well actually until pretty recently I just had the blank white box and then would have to just keep making an object outline around each one. 'Eventually' it dawned on me to just make a blank box with the frame already around it !, Yes ok, ok !! Hence the two different types. If I was to want to change all the original 'blank gif' to 'blank frame' not only would it be tedious beyond all belief but it would take me weeks !

Also I was obviously thinking ahead because If I hadn't done it like that we may not have come across this 'problem' There's always 'some' method to my madness !

quote:

There is a known bug, affecting small images, soon to be fixed -- this stretches your Lefties L. There may also be a bug that shifts small images down, affecting only IE.

I hadn't even noticed that Bruceee !

quote:

The remaining problem that I see from your examples is that the green background spills into the bottom of your rectangle It seems that in your case SS Pro may be re-rendering something that doesn't need to be re-rendered and screwing up in the process.

That was what I was moaning about yes, well I'm glad at least that I don't seem to have missed the obvious !

BTW, I had an outer body experience last night ( well I think it must have been at is was a 'thought' !! ) Now I have ssp, does that 'entitle' me to Free email technical help ? I reckon it must do, Yipeee email a day to VM ......... I wouldn't dare !

quote:

Needless to say, I haven't been able to recreate this with my simple 1-off example. Can you?

Just tried it...and yes I can.

1) With ssp,change background colour to anything other than white ! then 'load' 'blank.gif'
2) Object editor, UN check 're render', Outline, choose a colour and set thickness to 1.
3) preview and the background page colour is 'bleeding' into the bottom of the white box.

Well that's what happens every time on my pc anyway.

Cheers Buruceee

Andy

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Andys logos,

Separate issue from above just to confuse things...

If I change background to any colour apart from white and load in 'blank.gif' then...

1)double click on it, componetnts,shading,fill settings, then say make it bright red then ok, ok

Now I have a bright red square should I be able to put an outline (say black frame )around it ? If yes I can't.

2) double click on it, components,geometry,outline,make it black and say thickness 2, then ok, ok. It's still just a red box.

Now irespective of weather it should be able to put a frame around it or not just try the following...

3) Click 'undo' in my opinion nothing should happen as the last action made no visual difference, but the red square goes white with a 2 thick black outline. Now click 'undo' again and the box ( still with the frame ) moves to the centre of the page where it loaded from.

To me this is Not correct as If I keep using 'undo' it should finally leave in the state it was first loaded at, ie just a plain white box, but it never does. OK maybe not relevant to anything what so ever but just seems to be that something not quite correct is going on. Also once while I was experimenting with all the above and clicked ok the coloured box shot up to the top left corner of the workspace and nearly off the screen, sadly I can't reproduce this at the moment. The re render setting was left untouched by the way, in other default 'checked'

Andy

quote:

Just tried it...and yes I can.

1) With ssp,change background colour to anything other than white ! then 'load' 'blank.gif'
2) Object editor, UN check 're render', Outline, choose a colour and set thickness to 1.
3) preview and the background page colour is 'bleeding' into the bottom of the white box.

Well that's what happens every time on my pc anyway.

The color spill looks like a bug to me, especially as it doesn't happen in SS Basic or WebDwarf. So I have named it "Andy's Spill" after the disoverer. Also associated with that is a misalignment that shifts your blank well away from where it should be. That happens in IE, Firefox, Opera, and Chrome -- that may be a bug too.

I have rolled it all up into one self-contained project here. For now, the fix is to set re-render on. Strange things can happen with re-render off as you are then relying on the browser to do its image drawing from the code -- rather than providing it with an image.

quote:

If I change background to any color apart from white and load in 'blank.gif' then...

1)double click on it, componetnts,shading,fill settings, then say make it bright red then ok, ok

Now I have a bright red square should I be able to put an outline (say black frame )around it ? If yes I can't.

2) double click on it, components,geometry,outline,make it black and say thickness 2, then ok, ok. It's still just a red box.

I think that is a bug too. I find that if I then go and change the color of the rectangle, under conditions that I haven't figured out yet, I can get a border to appear -- I think it might be that even though the border is supposed to be black it is actually red.

For cases like this where you make the object (Blank.gif) externally, you may as well set the correct color and border at the same time. Then I suspect there will be no problems.

The Undo although a little quirky, is working as advertised (I think!) -- see here for an explanation of how it is supposed to work.

quote:

The color spill looks like a bug to me, especially as it doesn't happen in SS Basic or WebDwarf. So I have named it "Andy's Spill"

Thanks for that Bruceee, I feel like Charles Darwin !

quote:

I have rolled it all up into one self-contained project here. For now, the fix is to set re-render on. Strange things can happen with re-render off as you are then relying on the browser to do its image drawing from the code -- rather than providing it with an image.

Nice example you have done there, the alignment issue was like I had in wd a while back hereand I had done an example like yours, but sadly I seem to have deleted it, not quite the same thing though I know but on similar lines ( get it !! ) I always used re render Off because render on in WD causes the the 'same problem' but backwards.

quote:

The Undo although a little quirky, is working as advertised (I think!) -- see here for an explanation of how it is supposed to work.

Hmmm not sure that 'quirky' comes close to how it works lol, still not sure on this one,

quote:

Use this command to UNDO the previous edit operations on the selected Object. There are two levels of UNDO. Level one will restore the Object to its state prior to the previous transform. Level two will restore the Object to its state when selected.

quote:

Level one will restore the Object to its state prior to the previous transform

Now I guess it depends on exactly what that means, does 'transform' mean the last action you did, ie used geometry editor to alter something, OR does Not include your last edit but only takes into account your last 'major' action such as loading an image or something like that ?

EXAMPLE.

1) Load an image
2) Load a smaller one over the top of it
3) Click on the lower (first image) and then click on delete object
4) Click on 'undo'
The First object IS restored as it 'should be' bit Incorrectly positioned, it is now Above the second object. Then try clicking on various permutations of undo & redo and who on earth can decipher what is going on

Another example

1) Load an object, then save it, re load the page.
2) double click on it then /transformations, just change positioning & ok it.
3) You now Have a 'undo' button as you Should,click 'undo' and it goes back to where it was originally, as it Should
4) double click on the same object, change positioning again and ok, this time you have NO 'Undo' button as you Should, but you have a 'redo' Click redo and then it goes back to where it was before. Redo is to restore a prior undo NOT to restore a last edit.

If all the above IS correct ( and I have had even odder ones but can't reproduce them) then I think the VM team have a Great sense of Humor Indeed This is one Seriously quirky undo/redo system as you already said, Working completely different to any other graphics software I have used before !

All a bit disappointing really as unless these 'suspected' bugs are sorted I can't load my cursor site into ssp unless I want to do a huge amount of work on it again, which I don't realy feel that inclined to do Still got some work to do on it though so hopefully thing may be 'sorted' before I'm ready for it anyway

Cheers Bruceee

p.s. Any ideas on my preview window showing the animations really slowly ( the inbuilt opera one)

This message has been edited. Last edited by: Andys logos,

I agree, there often seems to be no logic in what undo/redo does. I know a rewrite of the undo/redo is on the VM do-list, but don't know what priority it has. My philosophy on undo is that if it works, it works, and if not, I make my undo some other way, on occasion even reloading the project!

A useful feature that you may not know about is on the Object Editor > Object tab. The Reset button resets the object back to its original scale.

I also don't know why the built-in Opera goes slow on your animations. All I can surmise is that a lot of animation on what is a bare-bones browser keeps it very busy.

Just revisiting the 2500 image limit: I now think that the same image repeated multiple times counts as only one image. In your cartoon cursor page, you have nearly 700 animations each comprising four images. That is 2800 images. As you have not hit the image limit there, my guess is that multiples of the same image may not count towards the limit. Just a theory of course, but it now looks better than my previous one

quote:

A useful feature that you may not know about is on the Object Editor > Object tab. The Reset button resets the object back to its original scale.

Thanks for that, I still haven't even looked at any of ssp properly at all apart from what we where doing here. When I get done I will read all the info and then get stuck in, then I'll make you and Larry 'earn' your bread and water !

I do have lot's of things to ask weather ssp can do this or that but I will bite my tongue for once and give you an 'Andy break'

quote:

Just revisiting the 2500 image limit: I now think that the same image repeated multiple times counts as only one image.

I did think that purely because I guess it only needs 1 actual image of a duplicated item on the server to reproduce itself 'x' amount of times I though that may be the same for image count. But as I think you where quite correct in what you were saying about having 2 different images doing the same 'job' a bit pointless it seemed irrelevant as my pages are 'wrong' anyway.

Now you did mention though it has of course been 'bugging' me ( ha ha no pun intended yet again ) ever since and I've even thought that maybe I should 'correct' it, obviously as it stands I'd have to at this point in time anyway to use it with ssp.

Thanks for your help as per usual gents, shall leave you in peace for a while.

Regards
Andy