Selection Mode Buttons

A button on the canvas that switches whoever presses it into a selection mode.

A Selection Mode button is an element that hands out a selection mode. Put one on the canvas and anybody can press it, without ever having opened the mode picker.

Adding one

The Selection Mode category, one of the six Collaborate categories, holds eight buttons, one per mode: Avatar, Select, Hand, Laser, Spotlight, Eraser, Format and Isometric.

Pick the mode you want and it drops ready to press, reading "Switch to Avatar" and switching whoever presses it into that mode. To point an existing button at another mode, right-click it and open Button; the face relabels itself to match. You can also type your own label over the derived one ("Walk with me"), and clearing it brings the derived text back.

Selection Mode buttons are in the palette in Diagram and Draw mode.

SWITCH TOSelectSWITCH TOLaserLEAVEAvatarTHE MODE CHANGES FOR WHOEVER PRESSED ITARPeveryone else stays where they wereYou
A row of Selection Mode buttons: two offering a mode, one offering the way back out.

What pressing it does

Pressing it changes the mode for the person who pressed it and nobody else. Everyone else carries on in whatever tool they were already using.

Pressing it again while you are in that mode hands you back your previous one, so a button is never a one-way door: a button for the mode you are already in reads "Leave Avatar" rather than offering it again.

A click on the round icon presses the button; a click anywhere else on the card selects it, and a drag moves it, so you can arrange a bar of them without setting one off.

An Avatar button drops your character just below the button, rather than in the middle of the screen, so it appears where you pressed.

Why a bar of them works

A Selection Mode button keeps working while you are in a mode that makes the rest of the canvas read-only (Avatar, Spotlight or Isometric), so a row of them makes a usable little control bar. It also works for somebody on a view-only link, since switching your own tool changes nothing for anyone else. The exceptions are Eraser and Format buttons: they change the canvas, so for anyone without edit access they show but do nothing. That is what makes it useful on a walkthrough: the viewer has the controls they need in front of them, on the canvas, rather than in a panel they were never told about.

In a read-only embed there is no tool to switch, so the button shows but does nothing.

Pair an Eraser button with a Select button so a reviewer can tidy up what they see and put the eraser down again without leaving the canvas.

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