Working with Story components in Inception

As with any story, a story in Inception is made up of different components such as a title, headline, body text, images, a footer and so on.

In Inception, components can be easily added or removed and for most components you can define how to present their content, such as aligning text or images, controlling the order of images in a slide show, and so on.

This article describes how to work with the Story components in Inception.

Note: For a full overview of all components, see Available Story components in Inception.

Adding components

To add a component, hover your mouse over an area between two existing components until you see a green plus sign appear. Click it and choose the component that you want to add from the window that appears.

Rearranging components

To move a component to a different position. click and hold it and then drag it to the position where you want to place it.

Styling the text

For information about how to style the text, see A beginner's guide to styling a Story in Inception.

Adding a hyperlink to text or images

A hyperlink can be added to text and image (except to images that are part of a slideshow). For details, see Working with hyperlinks in Inception.

Setting component properties

Many components have properties that can be set, such as the order in which images in a slideshow appear, the alignment of an image, and so on.

To set the properties for a component, select it and click the Component Properties icon in the toolbar on the right.

Figure: To set the position of a quote, click the Component Properties icon (A) and choose a position from the list (B).

Changing the component type

When you have added a component of a certain type (for example an image) and you want to change it to another type (for example a slideshow), use the Change Component option.

You will see different components to choose from depending on the component type that you want to change.

Example: You can turn a body text component into an image (the text will be used as the caption), but you cannot turn an image into a body text component.

Adding parallax scrolling to components

Info: This feature is only available for publishing to Apple News. The described option only appears when an Apple News channel has been set up.

Parallax scrolling can be added to each component in the Story. When enabled, it makes the component move at a different speed than the scroll speed of the Story itself, thereby creating an illusion of depth.

The pace at which the component moves can also be defined.

Enabling parallax scrolling and setting the pace can be done in the Apple News settings of the Properties panel for a component.

Figure: The Parallax scrolling options in the Apple News settings.

Note: To preview the parallax scrolling effect, publish the Story to Apple News and view it on a device.

Document history

• 4 April 2017: Renamed 'Properties icon' to 'Component properties icon'.
• 27 December 2016: Added section about parallax scrolling.