Table of Contents
Moving Index Cards
While planning the project, and often after authoring has commenced due to fine tuning, the author will need to move cards around the card-set to best create a coherent story flow. There are a number of ways to move cards within the set.
Card Selection
Occasionally, a movement process will need one or more cards to be selected prior to the move operation commencing. To do this, click the check-box located in the top left hand corner of all index cards required to be included in the movement. By itself, checking this box does nothing but indicates which cards should be included and which should not.
While checking a box does not affect the card otherwise, and the check-box can be used as an indicator to the author regarding an important card, it is a good idea to not check cards without a good purpose. If left checked when a movement process begins, you may find the wrong cards being moved or cards which you did not expect to be included.
Move Back and Forward
The [Move Back] [⇠] and [Move Forward] [⇢] icons are represented by dotted-arrows on either side of the environment label.
By clicking the [⇠] and [⇢] icons, you can move the individual index card backwards and forwards within the displayed list.
Special Note: Only when the entire Index Card matrix is displayed without an applied Range is it guaranteed that a card will move exactly 1 place forwards or backwards. Whenever a Range is selected, the cards to either side of the selected card may be (in the larger scheme) in very different locations to that on-screen. In this case, moving an index card back or forward will move the card to the position before the previous card (wherever that card happens to be) or after the next card (again, wherever that card happens to be).
Insert Before and Insert After
Using the [Insert Before] [⇜] and [Insert After] [⇝] icons requires the prior selection (using the checkbox in the top left hand corner of a card) of one or more cards other than the card on which the icon is pressed.
When selecting the [⇜] or [⇝] icons, the full range of selected cards is moved to the immediate left or right of the card on which the icon was selected, in the order that they appear in the overall matrix.
Dragging Cards to a New Location
The area between the [Move Back] [⇠] and [Move Forward] [⇢] icons represents the [Drag Bar] of the Index Card as well as displaying the Environment, being the only area which is not clickable for other purposes. When the mouse hovers over this drag bar area, the mouse changes into the [Grab] icon (this varies between browsers, but is usually a top-down hand in a 'grabbing' pose).
In order to move a card to a different order by dragging the Index Card, move to the [Drag Bar] then press and hold-down the left-mouse button (right, for a left-handed mouse). The card is now in 'drag mode' and can be dragged around the screen display. Move the card over another card and release the mouse-button to drop the card in that location.
Where the card is re-positioned is dependant upon where on the destination card you 'dropped' it:
- If towards the left-hand side of the destination card, the dragged card is positioned in front of the destination.
- If towards the right-hand side of the destination card, the dragged card is positioned after the destination.
If you drop the dragged card into a 'dead-area' of the index card matrix (i.e. not onto another index card), the card is moved to the end of the index cards.
If you want to abort moving the card, simply drop it somewhere in the [now empty] area that you removed it from.
