• Adobe InDesign

  Button Navigation for a PDF…How’d they do that?

  Posted by Frank Mixson on May 24, 2007 at 8:55 am

  I’m trying to reproduce a TOC like the one used in the latest abobe magazine(adobemagazine.com). Its a hidden page (I think its set up as field), that becomes visible when you click (‘mouse up’)on the TOC button along the right edge of each page in the doc. This TOC page is about a third of the width of the other pages, and sits over the page that you’re on when you ‘trigger’ the TOC to appear.

  This TOC, that is sitting above the current page, has buttons for navigating to each article and also a ‘close’ button. When you click one of the articles, that page opens and the TOC closes automatically.

  I’m trying to figure out how this was done. The help section not helpful with this. I thought that they made the whole TOC a ‘field’ thats subject to ‘show/hide’ behaviors in the button options behavior panel. But when I created the nav buttons and then tried to group them with a fill (the background for my TOC). I found that you can’t convert grouped buttons into a ‘button’, even if its only to be used as a ‘field’. But even if you could, how you would get the invisible button hotspots (that open the desired article) to not be active when the TOC page was not visible?

  I’m truly stomped! If this doesn’t make any sense, just check out the TOC on the lastest adobe magazine (adobemagazine.com). Its a free pdf, with some cool rollover effects, etc. I can all the other effects I saw in it. Actually I’m doing a ‘makeover’ of a friends start up e-zine, and the abobe magazine (formally called ‘Proxy’) is my inspiration. The TOC is the only ‘trick’ I can’t reproduce.

  Any help would be greatly appreciated

  Thanks Much,
  Frank

  Frank Mixson replied 19 years ago 2 Members · 2 Replies
• 2 Replies

• 

  Mike Gondek

  May 24, 2007 at 1:43 pm

  This is usually done in Acrobat Pro, but you can also do some PDF navigation to documents created with InDesign.

  Select the button tool, and draw a button, then use
  Window >> Interactive >> Bookmarks
  to set the states

  You can also create buttons from your own placed images
  Interactive >> convert to button

  If you really want to get into more interactive PDF documents Acrobat is the way to go with javascripts.
• 

  Frank Mixson

  May 24, 2007 at 4:03 pm

  Thanks Mike,

  for the reply. I understand how to make buttons and use them for navigation in Indesign, and even how to use buttons as ‘fields’ to create interesting rollover effects.

  My question, though, is more specific to a particular effect (or result).

  It seems, though, that I need to explore Adobe Acrobat. Maybe they used that for that part of the magazine. Its weird though, because when I looked at the layers for the Adobe Magazine PDF, all I saw were .indd’s shown as what made up the layers that made up the page.

  Thanks again..

  Frank

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