Unit 7-1 Manipulating Objects

After completing this unit, you will be able to:

• Understand the object-oriented nature of PowerPoint.
• Manipulate an object's border.
• Create 3D Effects.
• Group and Ungroup objects.
• Change an object’s stacking order.
• Align and distribute objects.
• Flip, rotate, size, and scale objects.
• Anchor text, adjust margins, wrap text, and rotate text in text objects.
• Crop graphics and adjust the brightness and contrast of graphics objects.
• Delete objects.

Reading

Read chapter 22 of the Multimedia Literacy textbook to study the concepts covered by this unit.

Online Activities

At the Multilit Web site you will find links to 3D graphical effects, color theory, and Pantone color applications. In addition, the following movies on the Multilit CD provide assistance in areas where some students have needed extra help; to watch one or more of these movies, open the file index.htm on the Multilit CD, go to chapter 22, and follow these instructions:

• Every object has a border. Often the borders are invisible, and you don't see them on screen. Text objects normally have invisible borders, for example, because you normally don't want users to see the borders around your text. Watch the movie entitled "Manipulating an Object's Borders" for a demonstration of this kind of manipulation.
• PowerPoint has 3D effects that you can use on AutoShape objects and WordArt objects to create some really cool special effects. To learn how to make 3D effects, watch the movie entitled "3D Effects."
• Objects can be flipped and rotated. The movie entitled "Flipping and Rotating Objects" demonstrates how to do this.
• Earlier in this tutorial, you learned how to size an object by dragging its handles. The movie entitled "Sizing and Scaling Objects" shows how you can also resize an object by scaling it by a specific percentage.
• To learn how to adjust the brightness and contrast of a picture, watch the movie entitled "Adjusting Brightness and Contrast."
• A situation may arise in which the background color of a picture doesn't match the color scheme of the slide you're putting the picture on. You can often solve this problem by making that color be the transparent color. When a color is transparent, it doesn't paint the screen; instead, whatever color is on the slide beneath will show through. To see how this works, watch the movie entitled "Setting the Transparent Color."
• Objects automatically stack in individual layers as you add them to a slide. Sometimes you'll want two or more objects to be grouped, however. Suppose you have a screen that builds as you click your mouse, displaying more information with each mouse click. On one of those mouse clicks, you might want more than one object to come on screen simultaneously. You can make that happen by grouping the objects. When objects are grouped, they will make their appearance on screen simultaneously. To learn how, watch the movie entitled "Grouping and Ungrouping Objects."
• When objects overlap, you can see their stacking order, because the top object covers a portion of the objects beneath it. If an object disappears because you lose track of it in a stack, you can press TAB to cycle forward (or SHIFT+TAB to cycle backward) through the objects until the lost object is selected. You can move individual objects or groups of objects in a stack. Objects can move up or down within a stack one layer at a time, or you can move them to the top or bottom of a stack in one move. The movie entitled "Stacking Order" shows you how.

Assignment

This unit is part of the hands-on tutorial in which you learn how to create a multimedia application and publish it to the Web. There is no specific assignment for you to hand in right now, but if you have not already told your instructor what your project will be about, remember that you need to answer the following assignment:

• The largest part of your grade in this course is determined by the multimedia application that you will create. Your application must have at least seven screens if you are taking this course for undergraduate credit, or at least fourteen screens for graduate credit. Before you develop the application, you need to have your topic approved. Please tell what your application is going to be about. Say why you have chosen this topic, and tell how you plan to design it. Describe your intended audience, tell how they will use your application, and indicate how developing this app will help you achieve the goals you had for taking this course.