Jun. 25, 2009
Adding interactivity and rollovers…
Once you have created a button, you need to apply an action to it in order to build functionality into your button. You have two controls over the functionality of your button, the Event and Action. The Event allows you to control when the action will become active. The Action controls the behaviour of the button.
Here is a list of the different Events and Actions available:
EVENTS
On Release: When the mouse button is released after a click.
On Click: When the mouse button is clicked (without being released).
On Roll Over: When the mouse pointer enters the button area defined by the button’s bounding box.
On Roll Off: When the mouse pointer exits the button area.
On Focus: When the button receives focus, either through a mouse action or pressing the Tab key.
On Blur: When the focus moves to a different button or form field.
ACTIONS
Close (PDF): Closes the PDF document.
Exit (PDF): Exits the application, such as Adobe Reader, in which the PDF document is open.
Go To Anchor: Jumps to the specified text anchor.
Go To First/Last/Next/Previous Page: Jumps to the first, last, previous, or next page in the PDF or SWF file.
Go To Previous View (PDF): Jumps to the most recently viewed page in the PDF document, or returns to the last used zoom size.
Go To Next View (PDF): Jumps to a page after going to the previous view. In the same way that a Forward button is available in a web browser only after someone clicks the Back button, this option is available only if the user has jumped to a previous view.
Go To Page (SWF Only): Jumps to the page in the SWF file you specify.
Go To URL: Opens the web page of the specified URL.
Movie (PDF): Lets you play, pause, stop, or resume the selected movie.
Open File (PDF): Launches and opens the file that you specify. If you specify a file that is not PDF, the reader needs the native application to open it successfully.
Show/Hide Buttons: Toggles between showing and hiding specified buttons in the exported PDF or SWF file.
Sound (PDF): Lets you play, pause, stop, or resume a sound clip.
View Zoom (PDF): Displays the page according to the zoom option you specify.
InDesign also allows you to add rollover functionality to a button. This can be done from the State Appearances section of the Buttons panel. Once an object has been converted to a button, it now has three different appearances. Normal, Rollover and Click. Normal lets you maintain the original appearance of the button, Rollover is where you can create a different appearance when someone hovers over the button, and Click allows you to have yet another appearance when someone clicks on the button. To change the appearance of a State, simply select your button, then double click on the particular state you are wanting to edit. That appearance will now be active (highlighted in blue), you can edit the object whilst it’s in that appearance, and it will only affect that State. When you’re done editing your appearances, it’s best to double click back on the Normal State so your design looks as expected. When you export to PDF/SWF the rollovers will be present.
For more information on this topic via Adobe help click here.
[Click play to watch video tutorial, will commence once downloaded in full]
Get the Flash Player to see the wordTube Media Player.
Posted by Neil Oliver in Interactivity | No Comments
Jun. 24, 2009
Learn how to convert an object to a button and take advantage of InDesign’s sample buttons…
Buttons allow you to create real control over how a person will interact with your dynamic PDF/SWF. You can create buttons that will to go to particular page, take a client to your website, send you an email, open a file or even open a movie. In this post I’m going to show you how to create a button.
You can create a button from any text frame, graphic frame or object within InDesign. To create buttons it’s best to work from the Buttons panel. This can be found in the Window menu “Window > Interactive > Buttons”. When you’re ready to create a button, simply select the object with the Selection tool and click on the “Convert to Button” icon (see image below) at the lower right of the buttons panel.
Once your object has been converted to a button, you will see a button icon appear within the lower right of the object. This is a visual indicator only, it won’t print. If you cant see this little button icon within your new button, it may be for a few reasons; 1. You may need to zoom in on the object a little, 2. You may be in preview mode. If so, hit “W” to exit/enter preview mode, 3. You may have “Hide frame edges” on - to turn this off go to the view menu and choose “Show Frame Edges”.
Once you have converted an object to a button you can convert it back to a normal object by selecting it with the Selection tool and clicking where the “Convert to Button” icon was. It is now a “Convert Button to a Object” icon.
Rather than creating your own buttons InDesign, CS4 has some sample buttons built right into the application. You can access these sample buttons directly from the flyout menu of the Buttons panel (see image below), or you could change to the Interactive workspace. The sample buttons will be docked on the right of your screen. The sample buttons panel won’t be found within the Window > Interactive menu, don’t get caught out.
To add one of these sample buttons to your layout, first select it and then drag it directly to your layout. One advantage of using these sample buttons is that they are already interactive with actions applied. We’ll be looking at adding interactivity to buttons in the next post.
For more information on this topic via Adobe help click here.
[Click play to watch video tutorial, will commence once downloaded in full]
Get the Flash Player to see the wordTube Media Player.
Posted by Neil Oliver in Interactivity | 1 Comment
Jun. 17, 2009
Before we dive in too deep, we need this tip…
This video tutorial explains where in InDesign the interactive features are found. It also shows you the built in workspace for working with interactivity.
[Click play to watch video tutorial, will commence once downloaded in full]
Get the Flash Player to see the wordTube Media Player.
Posted by Neil Oliver in Interactivity, Interface | No Comments
Jun. 16, 2009
As promised…
Thanks for joining me today! Below you will find the links to the working files…
Dynamic SWF after interactivity was applied
PDF document explaining interactivity
You might also want to check out this link for more info on InDesign’s interacitve capabilitites from Adobe Support.
Posted by Neil Oliver in News, Preferences | No Comments
Jun. 16, 2009
Take your design to the next level with InDesign’s powerful interactive capabilities…
Did you know InDesign can export to Flash and SWF? Did you know you can create interactive documents with movies, sound, buttons, rollovers, hyperlinks, bookmarks, page transitions and much more?
Check out my recent eSeminar on all thing interactive http://pacific.adobe.acrobat.com/p37436991/.
…
Posted by Neil Oliver in Interactivity, News | No Comments
Jun. 3, 2009
A quick way to get rid of the distractions and view bleed on the page…
If you’ve ever wanted to get a clear look at your design without all the distracting ruler guides and margins, then you need to go into Preview mode. There are four preview modes available when viewing your document page, Normal, Preview, Bleed and Slug. “Normal” is how you’ve always previewed your document pages, with all the ruler guides and margins visible. “Preview” removes all the ruler guides and margins from view giving you a clear look at your design so you can accurately conceptualize how the design is looking. “Bleed” and “Slug” do the same as “Preview’ with the addition of the document bleed or slug now being visible.
To access your preview mode simply press “W” on your keyboard. By default when you press “W” you will toggle between “Normal” and “Preview” modes. If you want to access the other preview modes you need to locate the preview icon at the very bottom of the tool panel. If you click and hold for a second, a menu will appear where you can specify which mode you want. Once you select that mode from the tool panel, it will be set as the default preview mode when you use the keyboard shortcut “W”.
If you have trouble remembering to check for bleed within a document, you really should set “Bleed” as your default preview mode (as well as using InDesign CS4’s new Preflight feature). With bleed as your preview mode you can quickly scan over the page edges and drag out any images for frames that should be bleeding off the page.
For more information on this topic via Adobe help click here.
[Click play to watch video tutorial, will commence once downloaded in full]
Get the Flash Player to see the wordTube Media Player.
