Exhibit Kit
Find Out More editor: Reference manual
This is a reference manual that lists all the controls and settings of the Find Out More editor.
How the editor works
1) Download. Download the exhibit kit editor to your office computer.
2) Create. Use the editor to create your exhibit. The editor is as easy to use as a wordprocessor - type text in the text boxes, load pictures into the picture boxes. There's no programming involved.
3) Publish. Choose the "Publish" option to make a single file which contains your exhibit. Put this on a flash drive and transfer it to the gallery. Job done.
The best place to start
Isn't this manual! I would recommend that you start by going to the "Quick start guide". You can find the Quick start guide in the Help menu.
Go through the Quick start guide, using the example exhibit provided. Then have a play with the options to get a feel for how it all works. This manual is probably best used if you want to know something specific or get stuck.
Most recent version
The most recent version of the software is v1.1 dated 1st March 2010.
Contents
What's new in the latest version?
Show the content date whilst an exhibit is running
What computer and screen should I use?
What's new in the latest version?
The latest version of the software is v1.1 (1st March 2010).
It includes these changes:
- Much faster loading, saving and publishing. This is particularly noticieable for exhibits with video.
- Smoother, more polished transitions.
- More space for image captions
- Small tweaks to the graphic design
- Zoomed images now appear if you touch the image itself as well as the '+' button.
- Fixed a problem with deleting stories from Find Out More.
- Added a way of checking the content date of a published exhibit.
Menus
File
New - Creates a new exhibit. The default name is "untitled.fom"
Open - Opens a previously saved exhibit
Save - Saves the current exhibit
Save As - Makes a copy of the current exhibit and saves it to a new filename
Publish - Creates the final exhibit which you install on your gallery computer. This is a single .exe which contains all your text, images and videos. If you have a lot of content this can take a minute or so to create.
Exit - Exits the editor
Edit
Undo - A simple undo function. This only works for text edit and won't undo image or video changes
Cut - Cuts the currently selected text to the clipboard. You can't cut images.
Copy - Copies the currently selected text to the clipboard. You can't copy images.
Paste - Pastes text from the clipboard to the currently selected text box.
Delete - Deletes the currently selected text
Bold - Changes the currently selected text to bold. Some of the text boxes (such as page titles) are already bold by default so this has no effect.
Italic - Changes the currently selected text to italic.
Remove formatting - Removes text formatting from the currently selected text
Insert - Allows you to easily add special characters which are difficult to enter using the keyboard as shown below.
Modify
The modify menu has different options depending on whether your on the Menu screen or a Page screen.
Menu screen
Add story - Adds a new story containing a single page. If you have selected a story it adds the new one after the selected story. If no story is selected the new story is added to the end. There is a limit of six stories. However, the free version of the editor also has a limit of 6 pages. If you've reached this limit you won't be able to add any more stories.
Remove story - Removes the selected story. This option only works if you're on the Menu screen and have selected a story. If you only have one story you won't be able to remove it.
Move story forward - Moves the selected story forward one place. This option only works if you're on the Menu screen and have selected a story. You can't move the last story forward.
Move story back - Moves the selected story back. You can't move the first story back.
Page screen
Add page - Adds a new page after the current one. The free version of the editor has a limit of 6 pages. If you've reached this limit you won't be able to add any more pages.
Remove page - Removes the current page. If there's only one page in your story you won't be able to remove it. Go to the Menu screen and remove the whole story instead.
Move page forward - Moves the current page forward one place. You can't move the last page forward,
Move page back - Moves the current page back one place. You can't move the first page back.
Goto
Menu
Story 1>
Exhibit options
Timeout options
This menu lets you go to all of the different screens in your exhibit. Each story has a sub menu which lets you go to the individual pages in the story. The Exhibit options screen lets you change options which affect the whole exhibit, such as colours. The Timeout options screen lets you change the options for the timeout which automatically resets the exhibit if the user walks away half way through.
Run
From start
From here
The run menu lets you test the exhibit as if you were using it on gallery. When the exhibit is running you can go back to the editor by pressing the "edit content" button.
Help
Quick start guide -
Brings up the quick start guide to get you going
Reference manual - Brings up this reference manual
About.... - Tells you the version and date of the editor and what kind of license you have.
Screens
Menu
The main menu screen which is the first thing visitors see when they use the exhibit. Contains text boxes for the title, introduction text and picture credit. Contains 1-6 story buttons. You can change the story title by editing the text on the buttons. There's also an image box. More about adding images and video.
Page
Each story can have any many page screens as you like. (Although the free version of the software is limited to a maximum of 6 pages). On the right of the screen there are two text boxes for the page title and main body text. Below the body text there's a page indicator which shows users which page they are on. This works automatically and you don't need to edit it.
On the left of the screen there's space for an image or video clip. (More about adding images and video). Below this there's the option of having up to two "More information popups" (see below). Below these there's one text box for an image caption and another for the image credit.
More information popups
A "More information popup" is a button that users can press to bring up more information on the subject of the page. They're optional but you can have up to two on each page.
If you want to enable the popup then click on the "Enabled" checkbox to tick it. You can change the button text by clicking in the blue box and editing it. To edit the text which appears click on the "Edit popup" button.
Each popup has two text boxes. The top one is for the title text and the bottom one for whatever information text you want to add. Click on the "Close" button to close the popup.
Exhibit options
The screen lets you change options which affect the whole exhibit. It is divided into four sections.
General The options here are:
- To hide the the Mouse cursor (arrow). Touchscreens look better with this off. Even if you switch it off you can press space to switch it back on.
- The button sound is the sound made when a button is pressed
- The transition is the way the exhibit changes from one page to another. You need to change to run mode to see these. Some older computers are too slow to run these well and its best to select "none".
Colours This lets you change the colour scheme for the whole exhibit. You can choose from a number of preset colour schemes by using the Colour scheme drop down box. You can also create your own colour scheme by clicking on one of the colour swatches on the left of the box. This opens the colour palette which lets you select any colour you want. You can also type in a "hexadecimal RGB" colour number to select the colour. This type of colour number is used by web designers and can be generated by tools like Photoshop.
Menu Screen
The story buttons on the menu screen show a "visited" label once a user has visited that story. You can change the text of the label here.
Page screen
You can change:
- The text which appears on the "Menu" button
- The text which appears on the page indicator (the default is "of")
- The text which appears on the "More information popup" close button
<<Back to contents
Timeout options
If a user walks away from the exhibit halfway the exhibit brings up a box which asks "Are you still there". If they don't press the screen within ten seconds it reset the exhibit back to start. This is called a timeout. On this screen you can change the options for the timeout
- Enable timeout. Lets you enable or disable the timeout mechanism
- The timeout fires if the exhibit hasn't been touched for a certain number of seconds. You can change the time limit here.
- The title of the timeout box
- The text of the timeout box. It is split into two parts - the first is the text before the seconds countdown, the second is the text after it. If you're not sure what this means try editing the text and wait for the timeout to see the effect is has.
<<Back to contents
Images and video
You can add images and video to the pages of the exhibit. Initially the places where you can add an image look like this.
The "Image max size" text refers to biggest image you can put in this place on the screen. The numbers are the size of the image in pixels. Pictures on a computer are always measured in pixels rather than inches or centimetres. To add an image click the "Load media..." button.
This will bring up a dialog box to let you select the image you want. Images have to be in the JPG format (also known as JPEG). Luckily this is very common. If your image isn't in the right format you'll need to use a program like Photoshop to convert it.
If your image is smaller than the maximum size then it will now appear on the screen. If its larger than the maximum size you need to crop or resize it and the "Image Crop and Resize" tool appears to help you.
Image: Merchant Adventurers
This shows you your image and then shows the area which will be used in the exhibit inside a dotted line box. You can move this box by dragging it with the mouse. You can also resize it by dragging the corners of the box. The final image will always fill the image area on the screen exactly. This means that the dotted line box always stays the same proportions as the final image.
When you're happy with your choice click "Crop and Resize". Depending on the speed of your computer this might take several seconds to resize the image.
Zoom images
Image: Merchant Adventurers
On page screens you can also add a "zoom image". This is a much larger version of the same image which visitors can access by pressing on a "+" which appears under the original image. To add a zoom image:
- Add a normal image first
- Click the "New zoom..." button and choose your zoom image
- Zoom images have a maximum size of 1280 x 1024 pixels (the size of the screen). If your zoom image is larger than this you'll get the crop and resize tool to make it smaller.
- The zoom image will now appear. Click on it to hide it. To see it again you'll need to run the exhibit and click on the "+" button or the image itself.
<<Back to contents
Video
Everywhere you can add an image to the exhibit you can also add a video. To do this click on the "Load media..." button, but instead of selected an image file you need to select an .flv (known as FLV) format video file. This will load your video onto the screen and start playing it. The crop and resize tool doesn't work on video so you need to use the "max size" values to make sure that your video clip is the right size for the screen.
FLV isn't quite as common a format for video as Jpg is for pictures. However, it is used for a lot of web video including Youtube and the BBC iPlayer so its pretty common. If your video is in the wrong format you can use a video editing tool like Premier Elements to convert it or you can buy a dedicated conversion program.
There are quite a lot of options to choose from with the FLV format which make a different to the file size and quality of the final result. The best "codec" to use is "H.264" although "On2 VP6" isn't bad.
Show the content date while an exhibit is running
There's a secret command built into the exhibit to let you see when the exhibit content was last changed. This can be really useful if you make a small change to the content and what to check that the exhibit in the exhibition is running the right version.
To show the content version, move the exhibit back to the first screen. Then click or touch in each of the corners of the screen in turn. Start with the top left corner, followed by the top right corner, then the bottom right and finally the bottom left. Then will bring up a dialog box showing information about when the content was last changed. To remove the dialog box, just click on it.
Please note: This only works in the runtime version of the exhibit, not the editor.
The screen shows how this works. If you click in the corners indicated by the pink numbers then the information dialog above appears.
What computer and screen should I use?
Exhibit kits can create exhibits to be controlled by a mouse, trackball or touchscreen.
However, make sure that you unplug or hide the computer keyboard as this will let users escape from the exhibit.
We recommend that you run the finished exhibit on a screen with resolution of 1280 x 1024. You can use screens with other resolutions but the display may look squashed or have a larger border.
Exhibit kits have been tested on Windows XP and Windows Vista computers. We recommend a Core Duo 2 processor with at least 1 GB RAM. We don't recommend that you use a netbook or Atom processor based computer as they may not be fast enough. You're welcome to try and let us know how you get on.
There is currently no Macintosh versions of the Exhibit kits. If there's sufficient demand we may look at creating some. Do get in touch at exhibitkit@joecutting.com.