Mouseover/link on non-regular shaped objects

[Jambo]

Hi again,

Sorry, I did the exercise in a hurry and only did a quick check in preview!
I overlooked when it is exported, it converts vector shape to a .png image: therefore it overlays the full square.
Silly me, I have only just started with XWD, so still some things to learn!

My thanks to all you guys for a great forum site... I have read a lot of posts with much interest.

Jambo

[Boy]

This issue of 'irregular' ( i.e., non-rectangular) clickable/mouse-over shapes was discussed before. At the time I couldn't find a workaround, but this time I did by using text boxes. For my example I used the map of England (I'm not sure who originally brought it in, Cursor or ChrisBro).

1. Create a new layer and make a text box filled with characters;
2. Copy and resize this as many times as necessary in order to completely overlay the shape you want to have the on-click/mouse-over effect;
3. Select all text boxes and softgroup them;
4. Set the on-click/mouse-over link and apply transparency of 99,5% to the whole softgroup.

In the attached example, I included a copy of the text boxes layer w/o transparency so that you can see how I placed the various text boxes in the shape of Southern England. (The part that shows in the preview also has the mouse-over effect). I could have positioned these boxes much more economically, I'm sure, but didn't bother. It seems to work and I didn't notice any delays, but I wonder if improvements to this workaround can be made.

[covoxer]

An Xtremely clever technique, Boy!
You can also use rectangles insted of text as it is exported as a bitmap anyway.

[cursor]

Very smart thinkin', Boy.

Might image maps (using irregular shaped objects) be supported for mouseover effects in the future, covoxer?

[Boy]

You can also use rectangles insted of text as it is exported as a bitmap anyway.

Indeed, but it takes more time to cover an area than when using text boxes, certainly when the shape is very complex and the image maps need to be small.