Autoadjusting text-bar/two new behaviours in full effect

Have to admit - my expectations for vers.5_3 of Motion were (much) higher, but there’s a lil’ gem well hidden in it. Let me explain with this project…



(omg, Comic sans … got your attention, right? )

Goal is, to create a Title with an auto-adjusting bar. We all knew of Alex Gollner’s trick with clone and border frame and so on … 5_3 has a better one.


Step#1



I make me a bar, gradient fill, outline - have to confess, design is ‘borrowed’ by some German football magazine.

Step#2



Clubs colours, duplicate of the white one, now in red, cut-off the left margin ….

Step#3



Magic sauce ALIGN TO … adding this new behaviour auto-aligns the red extension to the white bar - wherever the white bar is or how long/wide it is, it now has a colourful ending.

Step#4



Adding clubs name … add title, and add Align-to to the white bar. Now, the bar (with its red extension) will follow the text wherever it goes…

Step#5



Drumroll, magic sauce II … LINK WIDTH … add a Link behaviour to White Bar, link it to the text, and choose OBJECT ATTRIBUTES/SIZE/WIDTH. Now the width of the bar is linked to the length of the text - more text=longer bar, less text=you got the idea …

Step#6



Final cosmetics … resize bar, add an off-set to let the bar ‘breath’ l/r of the text …

Finally …



Moving around the title AND typing in any text auto-adjusts the bar position AND width … isn’t that cool?

… and no more -0.5 nor cloning nor … wot ever.

Thanks to Mark Spencer explaining these new features …

… and to follow my steps, here's is the above project as a Motion file: