User Guide > Working with behaviors > Working with visual states > Adjusting behavior of grouped objects

Autoplay Menu Designer offers advanced grouping functionality.  There are two ways objects can be grouped in Autoplay Menu Designer: you can create a Group or a Union. Groups and Unions allow you to merge different visual objects together to make them function and interact with the user as a whole.

You can read more about groups here Group, Combine and Ungroup visual objects.

Objects in a group act like individual objects and retain their original behavior. Objects in a union act as one bigger object, and whenever an event triggers for any object in the union, it triggers for the whole union.

So, when a user points an object in a group with the mouse, this triggers the Mouse Enter event of this object only and the same event of the group. But if that object was a part of a union, this would trigger the Mouse Enter event of all objects in that union.

Group Actions

Actions assigned to a group are executed for all members of the group, when the corresponding event triggers. If an action is also assigned to some object in a group, the individual action is executed after the group action.

Unions, however, function differently. Since unions are single objects, an action assigned to a union or to any object in it is automatically applied to all other objects in the union regardless of the individual settings. The triggering events also apply to all objects in the union.

This feature allows you to make multiple objects act the same way if any of them was activated. For instance, you can highlight multiple objects (put them to the Over state) if a user points any of them with the mouse, or you can make several objects function as the same link and so on.

Group Variables and Timers

You can add user variables to the group object if you want to program some kind of cooperation between objects in a group, or coordinate their behavior. Group timers are perfect for synchronizing operation of multiple objects. Also, adding local group variables allows you to create ready-to-go components you can put to the library and use in your future projects with minimum adjustment.