Text

Text Areas allow you to display text in a question, as well as in Feedbacks. The maximum number of text areas you can have in one screen is 100 (including text areas in feedback areas). You can resize them, drag them into position, and double-click to edit their text. When you are editing a Text Area you can simply press the Tab key on your keyboard to automatically move to the next Text Area.

Style and Visual Appearance

The font, font size, font colour, background colour and any background box are automatically set according to the Style setting. You can select substyles, such as Body, Title, Small, etcetera using the Type menu. Click here to find out more about creating your own style. If you wish to directly alter the font, font size and other settings then change the Style setting to Custom and the controls you need will appear.

Selecting fonts. You can change the font and style of text easily, but remember that Question Tools Exam, or the web browser in which the lesson, survey or test is delivered, will need to have the same font, and so try to use fonts/typefaces that will be present on all of the computers upon which the test will run. Fonts that are on most Windows computers are: Arial, Bookman Old Style, Century Gothic, Century Old Style, Comic Sans MS, Courier New, Garamond, Symbol, Tahoma, Times New Roman, Trebuchet MS, Verdana, Webdings, Wingdings.

Copying Text

You can click on a Text Area with the right mouse button and copy all of its text to another Text Area, the results text for the question as a whole, or the results text for any Drag, Button, Menu or Field.

You can also double-click on a Text Area to edit it, select just some of the text, and then right-click to copy just the selected text to another Text Area, the results text for the question as a whole, or the results text for any Drag, Button, Menu or Field.

Results Text

Dynamic linking. If you wish you can dynamically link text in a Text Area to results text for the question as a whole, or the results text for a Button, Field, Menu or Drag. In this way, the results text is updated every time you change the Text Area. To do this just enter the name of the Text Area (as it appear in the Question Inspector), but with square brackets either side of the name. For example, if you wished to link the text in a Text Area called Text 1 to the screen results text, then all you have to do is enter [Text 1] in the space for Results Text in the first tab of the Question Inspector.

Subtitles

If a Text Area is set to be a subtitle then it will only be shown if the user has turned subtitles on. This assumes that the user has been given access to the Subtitles button.

Note

If a Text Area is set to be a Note then it will only appear in Editor. The Text Area will be missed out of any test, lesson or survey.

Background

The Background controls allow you to automatically create a box around any Text Area. The Background controls will only be shown if the Style is set to Custom. You can also set the space in pixels around the text, as well as the line colour and background colour.

Links

The way links work depends upon whether your test, lesson or survey is delivered in a web browser, or using the Question Tools Exam software.

Question Tools Exam. If you enter a link such as MyBank.qtb then Question Tools Exam will open this Bank when the user clicks on the Text Area. The Open in new window setting will have no effect. If the link starts with http:// then Question Tools Exam will open the link as a web page. If the suffix .qtb is found then Question Tools Exam will close the present Bank and open the link in Question Tools Exam.

Web browsers. If a link ends with the .qtb suffix then Question Tools will convert this to .html when the test, lesson or survey is created as a set of web pages. The Open in new window setting does have an effect.

File Name

If a Text Area is named QTFileNameDisplay then it will shown the filename of the screen. By displaying the screen's original filename, often in small lettering in a corner of the screen, you provide reviewers and others who might provide feedback with a unique screen reference. In other words, reviewer's comments can be tied directly to a particular screen.

Other Controls

Lock. If lock is selected then you will not be able to move the Text Area using the mouse or the arrow keys on the keyboard — it prevents accidental movements. However, you can still move and resize a Text Area by entering values in the Left, Top Width and Height fields.

Name. You can give a Text Area more or less any name you wish. However, if you are swapping files between SimpleSet and Editor then keeping names such as Choice 1, Choice 2, etcetera is important because SimpleSet uses these names to match Text Areas to question elements.

Layer. Text Areas, Buttons, Shapes and Pictures can be made to appear above or beneath each other. Change the Layer setting to bring the object forwards or backwards. Layer 1 is shown at the front, and layer 10 is shown at the very back. Note also that Drags, Menus, Fields and Videos are always shown on top of other objects, and this is why they do not have Layer menus.

Master style reposition. This menu sets the adjustment a Text Area makes in its position to accommodate changes in the Master Style. Normally, it can be left alone. It is explained in more detail in the Styles section.

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