VisualNEO Win Plugin Manual

neoHotspots 1.3.1

Version:1.3.1
Suite:VisualNEO UI & Data Suite (Commercial)
Category:Education / Interactive Hotspots

neoHotspots creates educational activities from an image and visual points. It supports exploration, identification, guided tours, and scored assessment without requiring the VisualNEO author to write JSON or coordinates.

Installation

Install the folder com.visualneo.neohotspots.vnplugin with the VisualNEO Win plugin manager. The package contains the Delphi 11 Win32 module, palette icons, two custom controls, actions, events, and five editor languages.

Authoring workflow

  1. Add a neoHotspots Image object and choose its base image.
  2. Add one neoHotspots Point for every interactive location.
  3. Move and resize each point directly over the intended location.
  4. In each point, choose the base object in Linked neoHotspots Image.
  5. Enter its ID, title, description, activity order, and score.
  6. Choose a marker shape and colors or leave style colors as auto.
  7. Run neoHotspotsStart "ImageObject" when the page opens or from a button.

VisualNEO stores point positions as ordinary object positions. The author never needs to calculate coordinates or edit an internal data format.

Controls

neoHotspots Image

The image object owns the activity session, paints the base image, prompt, progress, score, and information panel. It inherits background, border, font, font size, text color, line width, and corner radius from the VisualNEO style palette when the corresponding color property is auto.

Main properties:

  • Base Image and Image Fit: contain, cover, stretch, or original size.
  • Instructions: initial prompt shown to the learner.
  • Activity Mode: explore, identify, guided tour, or assessment.
  • Shuffle Point Order: randomizes identification and assessment order.
  • Allow Retry and Attempts per Point: control wrong selections.
  • Show Progress and Score and Show Information Panel.
  • Interface Language: automatic, English, Spanish, Italian, German, Russian.
  • Background, Border, Text, Panel, Accent, Correct, Incorrect Colors.

neoHotspots Point

Each point is a separate object that can be selected, duplicated, aligned, moved, resized, and styled using normal VisualNEO tools.

Main properties:

  • Linked neoHotspots Image: base image selected with the object picker.
  • Point ID, Title, Description, and Accessible Description.
  • Point Icon: optional custom image.
  • Marker Label: optional text of up to three characters inside the marker.

It is empty by default; neoHotspots never derives letters from the title.

  • Marker Shape: circle, map pin, pulse, highlight area, invisible area.
  • Marker Visibility: always, on hover/focus, or after discovery.
  • Activity Order and Score Points.
  • Marker, Border, Text, and Found Colors.

During a guided tour, the current point uses Found Color with a contrasting border. Moving with Previous or Next immediately returns the old point to its normal marker color and highlights the new stop.

Points use a hand cursor, accept mouse/touch activation, and support Enter and Space from the keyboard. Their palette colors and typography are synchronized on creation and whenever the page becomes ready. Circle, map pin, pulse, highlight-area, and keyboard-focus outlines are rendered with antialiasing for smooth edges at both design time and runtime.

The VisualNEO palette uses two related but distinct icons: the image control is shown as a framed image with a marker, while the point control is shown as a single target marker.

Learning modes

  • Explore: any point freely reveals its title and explanatory text. It does

not count attempts or award score.

  • Identify: the learner selects the point named by the prompt. Incorrect

points remain hidden and no score is awarded. Correct answers pause so the learner can read the information and press Continue.

  • Guided Tour: the current point and its information are revealed

automatically, following the configured activity order. Built-in Previous and Next buttons navigate through the stops.

  • Assessment: identification with attempts, retry rules, scoring,

completion, and detailed results. Incorrect points remain hidden; each answer displays feedback before the learner continues.

The image control supplies its own navigation buttons where the selected mode needs them. Completed activities show a Restart button. Authors can also drive the same flows from VisualNEO scripts with the navigation actions below.

Actions

Every command begins with the required neoHotspots prefix.

TEXT 
neoHotspotsStart "ImageObject"
neoHotspotsReset "ImageObject"
neoHotspotsSetMode "ImageObject" "explore|identify|tour|assessment"
neoHotspotsSetTarget "ImageObject" "PointObjectOrId"
neoHotspotsNextTarget "ImageObject"
neoHotspotsPreviousTarget "ImageObject"
neoHotspotsContinue "ImageObject"
neoHotspotsRevealPoint "ImageObject" "PointObjectOrId"
neoHotspotsHidePoint "ImageObject" "PointObjectOrId"
neoHotspotsRevealAll "ImageObject"
neoHotspotsSetEnabled "ImageObject" "True|False"
neoHotspotsSetLocale "ImageObject" "auto|en|es|it|de|ru"
neoHotspotsGetResult "ImageObject"

neoHotspotsGetResult stores JSON in [neoHotspotsResult] and [ModernPluginResult]. It includes mode, started/completed state, score, maximum score, attempts, found count, target ID, and per-point details.

Events

Image events:

  • pointactivated, correct, incorrect, targetchanged
  • revealed, attempt, completed, reset

Point events:

  • activated, revealed

Event payloads include the image and point identities, title, description, score, attempts, discovery state, and whether the selection was correct.

Languages

The VisualNEO editor catalog and runtime UI include English (en), Spanish (es), Italian (it), German (de), and Russian (ru). auto uses the active VisualNEO locale and falls back to English.

Complete demo

Open demo/neoHotspots-demo.pub. It contains a Solar System image, four visual points, controls for all four learning modes, reset, and result display. The adjacent solar-system.png file is the demo image asset.

Build and test

The source targets Delphi 11 Win32. tests/HotspotsPluginSmoke.dpr checks API registration, descriptor lifetime, both control classes, mouse and keyboard activation, scoring, retries, completion, result JSON, actions, Unicode, and clean destruction. It also renders circle, pin, and pulse markers through the VisualNEO editor callback and the runtime paint path for visual inspection.

Version history

  • 1.3.1: highlighted the active guided-tour point and refreshed both the

previous and current markers when navigating.

  • 1.3.0: added explicit questions and feedback, Continue/Previous/Next/

Restart controls, persistent runtime mode selection, navigation actions, and an optional marker label that replaces implicit title initials.

  • 1.2.0: corrected multi-command demo scripts and made exploration,

identification, guided tour, and assessment behavior visibly distinct.

  • 1.1.0: distinct palette icons, antialiased markers and focus outlines,

transparent edge compositing, and expanded visual smoke coverage.

  • 1.0.0: initial image-hotspot controls, learning modes, actions, and events.