Adapting the Slider Control templates for your own use

Snap provides several templates for Slider Controls that you can use in your questionnaires. Sometimes these may not be exactly what you need. This worksheet describes how to change one of the templates to:

• make the bar in the Slider Control longer
• display the code label for the setting rather than a graphic.

Background

Slider Controls are made up of several graphics, plus some instructions on how they match up to a question. A Slider Control template has packed all this information into a single .sld file. To make changes, you need to unpack the information, edit the graphics, and put them back into the Slider Control. If you wish, you can then save this as a new template.

The Slider Control templates provided are all for a five-step rating scale. They use the code labels Very poor to Very good. This worksheet shows how to change the images used in the template, and shows how templates adapt to different rating scales.

Summary of steps

Step 1: Choosing a template as a base
Step 2: Editing the extracted graphics
Step 3: Displaying code labels instead of images for each position
Step 4: Using the new slider graphic
Step 5: Lining up the code labels with the slider

Step 1: Choosing a template as a base

1. Open your survey in questionnaire mode .
2. Click  on the toolbar to add a new question. Create a single response question with ten codes.
   
3. Select Show in the toolbar topics menu and select As Slider Control in the next dropdown list.
4. Check the Show box.
   
5. Open the Slider Control wizard by clicking [Slider Control] on the toolbar, or double-clicking the grey area representing the slider. (If you have a Slider Control you wish to edit in your questionnaire, open the Slider Control wizard by double-clicking the Slider Control.)
6. Select the template you wish to change in the Slider Control wizard dialog. This worksheet uses the one shown.

   

7. Click the [Extract] button. A dialog appears allowing you to choose the folder where the files will be saved.

   

8. Select the folder where you wish to store the images, or click [Make New Folder] to store them in a new folder and click [OK]. The graphic files used in the Slider Control template will be saved to the selected directory.

   

Step 2: Editing the extracted graphics

You can make any changes to the graphics that you like. If you change the height of horizontal graphics or width of vertical bars, you will need to make changes to the slider buttons and the graphic positions as well. For simplicity, this worksheet only changes the length of a slider bar.

1. Open the graphics package you are using to edit the graphics. (This worksheet uses MS Paint.)
2. Open the graphic to edit. The names of horizontal slider graphics are prefixed by “H” and vertical ones by “V”. For this worksheet, edit the horizontal bar graphic H_Bar_Fader.gif.

   

3. Save a copy of the graphic under a different name (e.g. H_Bar_Fader_2.gif).
4. Make the required edits. Double the length of the image in Paint.
   

   You can then copy and paste the graphic to fill the new width.
   This is the only change made in this worksheet, but you can edit the graphic as you wish.

5. Save the edited bar graphic.
6. Check if you need to change the graphic for the slider button to match the new slider. To edit the graphic to match, make a copy of the button image (H_Button_Fader2.gif) before you make the required changes.

Step 3: Using the new graphics in a Slider Control

1. Go back to your questionnaire in Snap.
2. Open the Slider Control wizard as described above (if it is not still open).
3. Select the template that you wish to change.
4. Click [Advanced]. This opens the Points on slider page of the Slider Control wizard. The points on the five-point template have been duplicated to create a ten point style that matches the question. The Snap code label column shows the code labels used in the questionnaire.

   

5. Click the  button by the top image to open the Insert Image dialog.

   

6. Click [Remove] and then click [OK] to remove the image and display the code label instead.
7. Repeat for all the other images. If you are not using images, make sure that you have a text label for each point, as it will be displayed when the respondent moves the slider to that point.
8. The preview shows the slider displaying the code labels instead of images. Move the slider button the whole length of the bar to confirm that you have removed all the images.

   

Step 4: Using the new slider graphic

1. Click [Next>>] to set the bar graphic.

   

2. Click [Browse] to find your edited graphic. The preview window changes to show the longer bar.

   
   If you have also changed the slider button graphic, click [Next>>] twice to go to the Slider page where you set the slider button graphic, and browse for a graphic.

   

Step 5: Lining up the code labels with the slider

By default, the code labels are put in the space left for the graphic. They now look a little high compared to the slider.

1. From the Slider page in the Slider Control wizard, click the [Next>>] button twice to move to the page where you set the position of the code labels.
   

2. Set the vertical space to 10. The preview shows the new position of the code labels. Change the number again if the code labels need further adjustment.
   

3. Click [Finish] to save your changes in the survey. You can turn your new slider into a template by clicking [Save As].

If there is a topic you would like a worksheet on, email to snapideas@snapsurveys.com