Hyperlink locations are off

I have received a number of reports of mis-aligned hyperlinks within the swipr-generated output. (BTW, I need a good name for this output, anybody got any ideas?). The problems can be traced back to two seperate causes.

Cause 1: Text objects are extending beyond the exported image.
If you select all objects in the page, you will notice pink outlines for all objects. See if you can determine the left and top edges of the exported image (compare it to the wireframe image), and then check if there are objects extending to the left and/or top of those edges. If any of the objects extending these edges are NOT on the 'no_export' layer, you have found your problem. This is normally caused by text objects that have a non-text part of the object extending above or to the left of the image. make sure all borders of text objects fall within the visible edges of the epxorted image.

A quick insight into how swipr creates the imagemap file that sets the hyperlinks:

1. Determine the upper left corner of exportable objects - For the current page, and all of its background pages, determine the upper left-most object. For text objects, this is the left top corner of the object, which is not necessarily the left top corner of the text itself;
   
2. Find hyperlink objects - cycle through the objects on the current page and all background pages to find objects on the prototype layer and the comment icon layer
   
3. Calculate location of hyperlinks - do some complicated calculations to convert internal Visio-based (bottom-left) locations to pixel-based (top-left) locations and dimensions;
   
4. Write imagemap file - write this information to a javascript file to include in the wireframe popup.
   

In the first step, you see the left top location is calculated on the basis of a text object's location and size. However, when Visio exports images, it will only export the visible portion of a Visio page. This means that there is a differnece between the calculated left top corner and the actual exported left top corner of the image, when a text object stretches beyond the visible left or top border.



So, make sure all text objects are within the visible borders of the exported image, either by moving them, or by extending the exported image to include the full text object.

Cause 2: A non-standard DPI setting of the computer's display
A new problem that came to my attention this week is when the computer display's DPI setting (the resolution) is set to a nonstandard amount (120 dpi instead of the standard 96 dpi, for instance). Swipr does not react nicely to this. The screenflow part of the export is fine, it has taken the dpi setting into account, but the wireframe output does not take that into account.

For now, the only work-around is to do the swipr output generation on a machine with standard dpi settings.

I hope this solves some of your problems!

100 downloads!

OK, so maybe I am overreacting a little bit, but last night we had our 100th download of swipr! This means that at least 100 people have probably installed it and looked at the demo project. I'm very curious to find out how many people are actually using it for a project at this moment.
As it happens, a number of former colleagues have started to use swipr here in The Netherlands. From them, I know that they are using it, although I have had to help them set up swipr to make it work for them. So how do I find out how many other people are using it?

One more question on my mind is this: at this time, over 170 people have registered for the swipr website. The only reason for them to do so at this moment is, as far as I can tell, to download swipr. However, only 102 downloads have happened so far. That means 40% of the people that register, do not download swipr. Is there a bug in my metrics set-up, or are people abandoning the process after they've registered? If anyone has experienced problem with the download, please let me know!

Extending the swipr documentation

As you may have noticed, documentation on swipr is quite sparse. It is difficult to find the time to create a very elaborate set of documentation, which is why I have set up the documentation in a wiki. It would be great if there are more people that would like to add to, and enhance the current set of documentation.

If you would like to contribute, please send me an email (info at swipr dot com). You'll need to be registered on swipr.com (which you probably are already). I will then change your role in swipr.com, so you have sufficient rights to modify and add content in the documentation area. Thanks in advance for your contributions!

swipr visitors & downloads

This picture is taken from google analytics, that is keeping track of visitors to swipr.com. As you can see there are two peaks. The first (very small) one happened directly after the release of swipr in Berlin, during the weekend of Sep 30th - Oct 1st. A maximum of 46 visitors and 579 pageviews on one day was the result of this.

On Wednesday, Oct 25th, I sent a message to two IA mailing lists (IxDA Discuss and SIGIA-l). This peak was a bit more impressive, resulting in 261 visitors and almost 3000 pageviews in one day. Visitors then sharply fall again, but I'm hoping that there will be a bit of publicity within the blogosphere after people start using swipr in the next couple of weeks.

The total number of swipr downloads is now up to 92. I'm hoping at least soe of these people will actually start using swipr. I've been helping out a couple of people here in The Netherlands with setting up and starting to use it, which might be a bit more tricky for people further away. Still, it should not be an excuse not to use swipr, as there is a support forum on the swipr site which I am constantly monitoring.

swipr goes blogging

Welcome to the swipr blog! After releasing swipr last month in Berlin, during the Euro IA, I was wondering how to keep people updated on new developments. It seems that a blog might be the best way to do so. The plan is to give regular updates on further development of swipr. Also, I might give some hints and tips for common problems, and it would be great if swipr users would allow me to show different applications of swipr in real life.