There are several actions that affect toolbars: Hide Toobar "specific name", Show Toobar "specific name", Switch to Toolbar "specific name", and Hide All Toolbars. This tip gives you some ideas about how you might combine these actions in a complex activity. As always, one of the best ways to learn is by taking apart an activity that uses this trick. First, we have a simple example activity with some notes that makes use of some of these commands. Download Toggling Toolbars right here. Two recent Goodies have made use of toggling toolbars on and off, and they will be very instructive. Be sure to download Paint the Egg, and Plant A Garden. |
| 1. Typically you will find these toolbar-managing actions in the Page Actions. Perhaps some pages of an activity need a colors toolbar, but others might need a toolbar with items to insert. The most efficient way is often to use Hide All Toolbars as the first Page Action. Then put in a Show Toolbar "specific name)" for each one you need on a page. You will be aware of this kind of toggling whenever you see toolbars disappear as you go from page to page. |
| 2. Another place you might find these toolbar-managing actions is in a toolbar button! Many of our writing templates have a little abc button that has the action Show Toolbar "Alphabet". If a student clicks that button, it opens an online keyboard. The abc button also has a Hide Toolbar "Show Letters" action. This action makes it hide itself! And finally, it has a Show Toolbar "Hide Letters" action. This displays a second toolbar with a button which has the abc with a slash through it. Can you guess what hide and show actions it might contain? You will see this strategy used often! |
| 3. Finally, you might have very complex toolbars where all, or some of the buttons use the Switch to Toolbar "specific name" action to bring up another toolbar that is a visual twin, but has different actions. When one of these buttons is clicked, it hides the current toolbar as it switches to its visual twin. To the student, the toolbar hasn't changed appearance, but it may now give different feedback to correspond to the changed situation in the activity. This is difficult to describe, but easy to see in action, so download the example Toggling Toolbars activity and try it out! |
