The Behaviour category (under Interactive in the palette's category picker) holds the elements that do something when somebody interacts with them. Everywhere else in the palette you are placing a picture; here you are placing a control.
Each is a row with its name and a one-line description of what it does, because a glyph cannot say what a Picker picks or where a Portal goes.
What the category contains
A Selection Mode button reads "Switch to Avatar" and switches whoever presses it into that mode; right-click it and open Tools › Button to point it at any other mode — Select, Hand, Laser, Spotlight, Avatar, Eraser, Format, or Isometric — or type your own label over the derived one. Pressing it changes the mode for the person who pressed it and nobody else, pressing it again while you are in that mode hands you back your previous one, and it keeps working while you are in a mode that makes the rest of the canvas read-only, so a row of them makes a usable little control bar. A Portal is a ring of energy you link to another portal: click it — or walk an Avatar-mode character into it — and you come out the far side, even on another tab. See Portals.
A Session button starts a session tool for everyone in the room: a countdown timer, a dot vote, or a poll you write in advance. Once a timer is running, the same button pauses it, and pressing again continues it — it becomes the timer's control rather than restarting the countdown. Right-click it and open Tools › Session to pick which, and its one setting — the number of minutes, the dots per person, or the question and its answers. It is how a board carries its own running order: put "5 minutes" over the writing column and "Vote — 3 dots each" over the results, and anyone can run the session. Starting a tool needs edit access, so on a view-only link the button shows as unavailable, though you can still take part once somebody starts it.
A Reveal zone is a cover you put over part of the canvas — answers, estimates, a retro column nobody should read early. Double-click (or double-tap) uncovers it on your screen only, with a small Hide pill to put it back — two presses, so a stray click on a busy board doesn't give the game away; Tools › Reveal › Reveal for all takes it off for everyone at once. It hides content from a reader's eye, not from a determined reader: everything underneath is still in the diagram, so don't put anything genuinely private under one.
A Picker chooses at random when you press it — one of the people currently in the room, or one of the options you write in Tools › Picker. It spins the candidates past and slows to a stop on the answer — people appear with their own avatar as they go by — and everyone sees the same result: handy for "who demos next" without anyone having to volunteer.
Working with them
Each behaves like any other element once placed: select, restyle, group, and move it freely. They keep working while you are in a selection mode that makes the rest of the canvas read-only, which is the point of a control bar made of them.
Put a row of these along the top of a board and it carries its own running order: a Session button for the timer, a Reveal zone over the answers, and a Picker for who goes next.
Was this article helpful?