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Create new Perspector list styles
By Tim Hards | February 6, 2008
I previously wrote about changing the properties of existing Perspector lists. Useful to adjust the form of a list selected from the library, but you might want to create a new style of list. Here is how you can create a list from scratch not based on any of the existing list styles.
The first thing to do is insert all of the shapes of the first list item. This could be a single shape or multiple shapes.
One of the shapes will be the main text shape of the list item. Select this shape and type “._[Text]”, i.e. period, underscore, [Text]. This changes the shape into a text placeholder.
Then select all of the shapes that will form the first list item, and choose Tools, Create List.
You will now be shown the Format List dialog box. See the list properties blog posts for a description of each of the properties. Set all the properties for the new list. The list properties can be changed at any time in the future in the same way as any other list.
When you are done setting the list properties, the new list is ready to use. Click the text placeholder shape and press Enter a few times to add some new list items.
If you are using the Professional Edition, you can add the new list to Perspector by opening the Perspector Panel from the Perspector add-in toolbar in PowerPoint, and clicking Add image to User’s Images. After doing this, the list is available for insertion from View User’s Images. The Convert Bullet List command will now also be able to use the new list style.
Topics: Perspector, 3D lists | No Comments »
Updated image: Newton’s Cradle
By Tim Hards | January 17, 2008
One of the images in the Perspector Library is Newton’s Cradle. You can read about Newton’s Cradle in this Wikipedia article.
A Perspector user pointed out to us that our version of Newton’s Cradle was incorrect as each ball was suspended on one string instead of two:
We have now corrected the image in the library to use two strings per ball:
To update your Perspector Library to get the latest image, open the Library and click Update library images. This applies to Perspector 3 and Perspector 4.
Don’t forget that all Perspector images are fully editable in 3D, so you can modify the images however you want. For example:
Topics: Perspector | 2 Comments »
Perspector lists - overview
By Tim Hards | December 20, 2007
These are all of the posts describing the 3D lists available in Perspector 4.0:
- Introduction to Perspector lists
- The Format List dialog box; the list direction property
- Space and offsets between list items
- The list item “with fixed position”
- Automatic color ranges in lists
- The list rotation property
- The growth per item property
Topics: Perspector, 3D lists | No Comments »
List property: growth per item
By Tim Hards | December 18, 2007
This post is the last in the series describing each of the Perspector list properties.
The growth properties are used to specify an amount to “grow” each list item by.
Growth properties are only available on lists where each list item is made of only a single shape. So, for example, growth properties are available on the Basic List in the library, but not on the Sphere Bullet Points list (each list item is made from a sphere and a block shape).
There are 2 parts to the growth properties: the type of growth and the amount to grow by.
Linear growth is the simplest. Each list item in the list is a specified amount larger than the previous item. The Expanding List in the library uses a 40 point width growth per item, combined with a 20 point X offset to keep the items left-aligned:
However, growth can also be negative. This is the same list, but the width growth has been changed to -40 point, and the whole list has been resized to make it wide enough:
Topics: Perspector, 3D lists | No Comments »
List property: rotation
By Tim Hards | December 14, 2007
Continuing the description of Perspector list properties:
The rotation properties are used to rotate each list item about the X, Y or Z axis of the item.
This is a Basic List with a rotation of 30 degrees about the Y-axis per item:
And this is a Basic List with a rotation of 20 degrees about the X-axis per item (the whole list has also been rotated so that you can see the effect more clearly):
Next week I’ll describe the last list property: growth.
Topics: Perspector, 3D lists | No Comments »
Automatic color ranges in lists
By Tim Hards | December 11, 2007
Continuing the description of Perspector list properties:
When Automatic Color Range is ON, lists are automatically colored with a range of colors from the first item to the last item. This setting is used whenever the colors of the first or last item are manually changed.
The following examples show the result of manually changing the fill color of the last item to white, with and without Automatic Color Range enabled.
The list on the left is the original list.
The list in the middle had the Automatic Color Range turned OFF. The colors of the other items were unchanged when the last item was modified.
The list on the right had the Automatic Color Range turned ON. When the last item was changed, all of the other items were automatically changed to range from blue (the first item) to white (the modified last item).
Note that in both of these examples, the text color used has automatically changed on some of the items so that the text is readable. However this can be overridden by setting the font color if required.
Topics: Perspector, 3D lists | No Comments »
List item with fixed position
By Tim Hards | December 6, 2007
Continuing the description of list properties in Perspector:
When a list grows with new items, the Item with fixed position property describes which item stays in a fixed position.
Usually the middle item is fixed so that the list stays centered, but this doesn’t always have to be the case. The Fold-out Tabs list in the Perspector library uses a fixed last item to make the list “grow” from the last item. Here is what the same list looks like with 4 items and with 7 items:
Topics: Perspector, 3D lists | No Comments »
Videos about Perspector
By Tim Hards | December 4, 2007
4 new videos have been added to the Perspector website.
They cover the basics of using Perspector:
- how to add an image from the Perspector library
- how to convert a PowerPoint bullet list
- how to add a chart
- how to add an image of another slide in a presentation
The videos have also been uploaded to YouTube so that you can embed them in your own blogs and websites like this:
How to add an image from the Perspector library
How to convert a PowerPoint bullet list
How to add a 3D chart
How to add an image of another slide in a presentation
I’d be interested to know if you feature these anywhere.
Are there any new videos you’d like to see? Email me or leave a comment.
Topics: Perspector, Perspector website and info | No Comments »
Space and offset between list items
By Tim Hards | November 30, 2007
Continuing my discussion of list properties, here is an explanation of the space and offset properties.
Space between list items
The space value controls how far apart the list items are.
This is a Tube List Items 1 list, with an ample 20 points between items:
And this is the same list with a snug -10 (minus 10) points:
Offset between list items
The offset values describe an additional distance between each list item.
This is a Tube List Items 1 list, with an X offset of 20 points between each item:
Below is another Tube List Items 1 list. This one uses a Z offset of 75 points to bring the lower items closer, and a -20 point space between items to reduce the vertical gaps:
In the next post I will describe the Item with fixed position property.
Topics: Perspector, 3D lists | No Comments »
Changing the look of 3D lists
By Tim Hards | November 28, 2007
In the last post, I discussed Perspector 4’s new lists. I mentioned that you could change the properties of lists using the Format List dialog box.
If you select a list in Perspector, and click Format, Format List…, you will see a dialog box like this:
I will discuss each of these properties in turn over the next few days, starting with…
List Direction
Direction describes the orientation of the list, and determines in which direction new list items are added.
The Basic List in the Perspector library is an example of a vertical list:
Whereas the Simple Flow Across list is an example of a horizontal list:
If a custom direction is used, there is no preferred orientation. The distance between list items is wholly determined by the offset values, which will be described in a later post.
Although the direction property is useful when creating new lists (more on this later), it isn’t so useful when changing the appearance of existing lists. The other properties are more useful, and I will describe these next.
Topics: Perspector, 3D lists | No Comments »