F1V7 34 Print to Internet: Content Repurposing (Cross Media Production)
LO2
PDF Interactivity Adobe InDesign & Adobe Acrobat
Paul Riddell / April 2008
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F1V7 34 Print to Internet: Content Repurposing
Setting up PDF Interactivity in Adobe InDesign InDesign allows us to add hyperlinks and buttons to documents that become interactive when exported as PDFs.
Add interactivity to a previously created document Open any multi-page indesign document. In order to add links to the pages of this document, we must first set up hyperlinks between pages, and buttons for navigation.
Hyperlinks and Destinations In order to link pages we must specify sources and destinations. InDesign requires us to set up the destination first (the text, objects or page we are linking to), then create the Hyperlink to the destination. A destination can be a page, a text anchor or a URL. To create a destination, place the text cursor in the text at the point you wish to link to, open the Hyperlinks panel (Window>Interactive>), and choose New Hyperlink Destination from the panel submenu. In the dialog box, type in a meaningful name for the destination. (Fig.1)
P&P | ID - PDF interactivity.indd v1 | Paul Riddell | May 2008
Fig.1 New Hyperlink Destination
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F1V7 34 Print to Internet: Content Repurposing
In the Destination section, choose the document you wish to link to. All open documents will appear in this list, allowing you to create links between different documents.
To create the Hyperlink itself, linking a source with the destination, choose the text or object you wish to use as the source (also called a link). If the link is a word within a sentence, select it with the Type tool. If the link is an object, such as a frame or image, then select it with the Selection tool.
Once a document is chosen, choose the link Type: Page, Text Anchor or URL (in our example, we will choose Text Anchor), then choose the Name of the specific text anchor we have in our document.
With the source selected, choose New Hyperlink... from the panel submenu.
If we want to link to a page, we can specify the page, and also the document zoom level.
The New Hyperlink... dialog is split into 2 sections. The top section deals with the link Destination, while the bottom section allows adjustment of the appearance of the link itself.
Once our link is set, we can edit the Appearance of the link, whether it is visible as a link or if it highlights when we click it.
Fig.2 New Hyperlink... P&P | ID - PDF interactivity.indd v1 | Paul Riddell | May 2008
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Š Glasgow Metropolitan College All Rights Reserved
F1V7 34 Print to Internet: Content Repurposing
! see page 5 for advice on using buttons
Another type of link source in InDesign is a Button. You can use buttons as sources in conjunction with Hyperlinks, or they can be used as a number of other things – popups or submenus, for example. To create a button, select the Button tool from the Tool panel and draw out a rectangle. (Fig.3) Open the States panel from Window>Interactive>. A button can have up to three states: it can be Up, Rollover, or Down. Up is the neutral state of the button. Rollover is when the cursor is moved over the button. Down is when the button is clicked. You do not need to include all states, but you must have the Up state.
Fig.3 A new button
The button itself can contain text, images, or can remain empty. If the button is to contain text, ensure the Up state is selected in the States panel, click into the button with the Type tool, and type in the text. Format as required. To have the text change appearance as you either rollover, or click on the button, you must create a new State. To add states to a button, click the Create new optional state icon at the bottom of the States panel. (Fig.4)
Fig.4 Create new optional state
Ensure the relevant State (Rollover or Down) is active in the States panel, and reformat the text. Repeat for any extra state.
P&P | ID - PDF interactivity.indd v1 | Paul Riddell | May 2008
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F1V7 34 Print to Internet: Content Repurposing
!
If you want to use an image as a button, you must place an image into the button. There are two ways to do this, Either click on the Place content into selected state icon at the bottom of the States panel (Fig.5), or choose Place content into state... from the panel submenu.
Fig.5 Place content into selected state
You can add different images into different states. Once the look of the button has been established, you can set the behaviour. With the button selected, choose Button options... from the panel submenu. (Fig.6)
Fig.6 Button options...
Button and Page links DO NOT WORK on exported XHTML files.
You must create TEXT ANCHOR links if you need to export your file as XHTML. P&P | ID - PDF interactivity.indd v1 | Paul Riddell | May 2008
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F1V7 34 Print to Internet: Content Repurposing
The Button options... dialog has two tabs: the General tab, where you name the button and set it’s initial visibility, and the Behaviour tab, where the button’s action is set.
Once you have created all your destinations, links and buttons, you must export the document as a PDF in order to enable the interactivity.
The Behaviour tab is split into two columns. The left column contains all the buttons Events, and this is initially empty.
Choose File>Export from the menubar, then PDF as the export format. The PDF export dialog will open.
The right hand column is where events are set. You first choose the event type from the list, Mouse Up, for example, then the behaviour (go to next page, previous page, text anchor, etc.). Options for the chosen event appear in the space below. Here you can set the document to link to, the text anchor name, and document zoom level, amongst others.
To enable any interactivity and audio and video you may have in your document, PDF 1.5 (Acrobat 6) is recommended. You must also check the Interactive Elements and Hyperlinks checkbox as the bottom of the dialog. An InDesign document can also handle placed Quicktime movies and audio files which become active when the document is exported to PDF.
Once you have specified the event, you must click Add to add the event to the event list on the left hand side. You can add any number of events to the button. Once you have an understanding of the basic button workflow, the flexibility offered by these behaviours will enable you to create interactivity such as dropdown menus, and images that appear when you rollover certain areas of a document.
P&P | ID - PDF interactivity.indd v1 | Paul Riddell | May 2008
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