December 2013 Release
ZebraZapps is pleased to debut a wonderful set of new conveniences for our authors.
Logging In
Immediately after you have logged into your account, the main screen will now default to your personal shopp. On this page you will have direct access to apps and gadgets published under your account to the shopps. In addition, this page can be customized for other members with your own icon / profile image and banner image. You will find uploading options for both images under the account tab.
Click Behind
Ever wanted to select an object layered underneath another object on the screen? Now authors can use the click behind key combinations to select and deselect layered objects. Simply hold down the ‘.’ on your keyboard while clicking a stack of objects. The red outline will indicate which object is now selected. In addition, hold the shift and ’.’ together while clicking to select or deselect a group of objects.
Pasting Text
ZebraZapps projects will now accept copied text from your operating systems clipboard without having to paste into an already created text object. Simply copy any text from Word or an email, click your ZebraZapps stage and use ‘command’ + ‘v’ to create a new text object with your copied text in side.
Style
There are three new features in regards to style that might catch your eye.
First – individual gradient colors can now have their own transparency. This allows authors to create masks or sophisticated looks with any native object (example: try creating a gradient fill rectangle with one end set to 100% White and the other 25% White)
Second – line end points now have their own arrowhead styles. You can now set start and end point styles and colors for any line on the screen. This is great for charts, diagrams, and indicating for a student the current selection.
Third – newly created empty text objects are no longer impossible to find! Only in edit mode, empty, unedited text objects have a light grey style similar to empty arena pages. This makes finding and wiring to an empty text object so much easier.
Performance Tuning
As with all of our releases, there are many new under the hood upgrades to performance. Most notably, advanced ZebraZapps users will find our logic tables have received significant attention. Upgrades to tables included fixes for both loading and editing projects containing the Answer Table and State Table.