Godtland Software Sliding Tiles Puzzle - Support

Updates

If you own Version 1.0, Upgrade to Version 1.1 for free.

FAQ - Frequently Asked Questions

If you have a question, see if it is already answered in this list, in the Trouble Shooting, Tips, and Techniques section below, or on the General Support page. If you have any other questions that are not currently answered in any of these lists you may send your question to support@godtlandsoftware.com.

• These puzzles are too hard to do. Is there a trick to solving them?
• When I went to a web page with this puzzle on it, the applet failed to load.
• The puzzle loads fine, but when I click on the puzzle I can't get the tiles to move.
• How can I put multiple puzzles on my website, so each puzzle is on a different page?

Trouble Shooting, Tips, and Techniques

The following trouble shooting, tips and techniques may also be found in the User's Guide.

Photo Selection

• Use photos instead of clip art - Images built from a photograph work better than drawings from solid colors. It is hard to tell which tiles go together when they are made up of solid colors, but even a clear blue sky in a photo often has subtle color differences which make it possible to tell which order they need to be arranged. Images built from clip art will be OK if there are not too many large solid areas.
• Avoid large solid white areas in your photo - When the user works on the puzzle, white is the color of the open space. If there are also white areas in your photo, it may be confusing as to which is the open space on the puzzle.
• Use photos at least 200x200 pixels - if your file is less than 200x200 pixels, the image will be enlarged to 200x200 which may cause some pixilation to appear and be a poorer image quality.

Puzzle Info

• What should you name your puzzle? - The name you enter here is the name that you want the users to see in the Puzzle choice list. For example, if your goal is for them to not know what it is a photo of till after they get the puzzle solved, you may not want to tell them what it is in the Puzzle Name.
• What kind of Photo Info should you enter? - What you decide to share will depend on your purpose for having the puzzle on your web site in the first place. Following are some ideas you may want to consider:
  • Family or vacation pictures - share details about the person or place, or where, why, or how the photo was taken.
  • Educational purposes - share some little known information about the object of your photo.
  • Advertisement - share details of your company and/or products as shown in the photo.
  • Sales - have them solve the puzzle to get a code that they can use to get a discount on their next purchase.
  • Announcement - make an announcement of some upcoming event which the photo might hint at.
  • Creative/entertainment - write a short story you made up about the photo, or zoom in on something that still may not be identifiable even when solved, then explain what it is in the Photo Info. For example, have a microscopic photo of a feather.

Cropping

• Zoom in on your subject - Crop out much of the background part of the photo so the main part of the photo fills up as much of the puzzle area as possible. This will make it a more interesting puzzle to work on.
• Crop off center if it generates identical tiles - The puzzle will not consider it a valid solution if two identical tiles are in the wrong order. You may be able to "fix" this by cropping the photo slightly off center.

.html File

• Modify the local copy of the SlidingTilesPuzzle.html file - If you want to use the provided SlidingTilesPuzzle.html file but make a few changes to it, be sure to change the copy of it that is in the Sliding Tiles Puzzle web directory instead of just the one that you have on your web server. That way you will be less likely to accidentally overlay the changes to the one on the web server with the older version one in your web directory. Also, this one that is in your web directory is the same one that gets used by the Sliding Tiles Puzzle icon on your desktop and in your Start Menu. See the Putting Your Puzzles On the Web section of the User's Guide for details of where to find your web directory.

Web Space

• Isolate the puzzle page and files - Put your page with the puzzle and all the puzzle files in a separate directory from the rest of your files on your web server. This will make it easier to know what files originally belong to the puzzle and may be deleted as you make updates to the puzzle.

Browser

• Make sure Javascript is turned on - These puzzles require the use of Javascript. If Javascript is not turned on the puzzle will not work.
• If the puzzle won't run on your computer - If you are able to run the puzzle when it is on the web, but not when you try running it when it is on your computer, you may have to look at the browser settings. The browser needs to be able to run Applets. Internet Explorer typically has this option turned off for files on your computer. You can turn it on by going through the Internet Explorer menu bar option of Tools / Internet Options / Advanced / Security / Allow active content to run in the files on My Computer.