Creating Interactive Documents In Adobe InDesign CS4
As we move away form days when the printed version of a document was always seen as the definitive one Adobe’s PDF format becomes more & more important. InDesign itself allows you to create PDF documents; you don’t need a separate copy of Acrobat for this purpose. In addition to creating the PDF InDesign allows you to make it interactive thus enhancing the user experience of anyone who browses it. To ensure that these various commands are included in the PDF you must activate the “Interactive Elements” option in the Export PDF dialog box.
There are four main types of interactivity which InDesign allows you to add to your PDFs bookmarks links buttons video & transitions. When viewing a PDF file in Acrobat or Acrobat Reader bookmarks are normally displayed in a panel on the left of your screen clicking a bookmark takes you to the page to which the bookmark relates. Links & buttons are hotspots which when clicked instigate an action of some sort such as opening a web URL. QuickTime video can now be embedded in a PDF file & transitions are useful when you want to create PDFs that can be viewed in a similar way to PowerPoint presentations.
Bookmarks are typically generated automatically in InDesign & are linked to the table of contents feature. The table of contents definition window contains an option for creating bookmarks. If this is activated InDesign will automatically generate a bookmark corresponding to each item in the table of contents pointing to the appropriate page.
Links can also be generated form table of contents. Each table of contents entry will automatically become a clickable link which will take the user to the corresponding page. In addition InDesign has a button tool which allows you to create a button on any part of a page. Using the Button Options command you can then specify what happens when the button is clicked. Thus for example you could create a button hotspot over your logo & specify that when clicked it will take the user to the home page of your company website.
Video is brought into InDesign using the Place command in the File menu. The only permitted format is QuickTime. Once the video clip has been positioned you can right-click it & choose Movie Options. Here you can specify when the movie plays whether it embedded in the PDF file or referenced externally & whether the QuickTime controller bar will be visible.
The Transitions panel is new to InDesign CS4 & allows you to associate transitions with all pages or selected pages within the document. Simply highlight a selection of pages & then choose the desired transition. To apply the selected transition to all choose the option Apply To All Spreads.
The author is trainer & developer Macresource Computer Training an independent computer training company offering InDesign Classes in London & throughout the UK.
For important facts about womens health study this web page.