Webstyle 'Hidden' pages in an interactive pdf
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Hi Experts! I’m currently working to complete an annual report which will be output as an interactive pdf and also Published Online. One of its intended features is a web-style landing page with buttons to a list of other brief articles. Clicking on one of these buttons will take you to the selected article front page; clicking on a Return to Annual Report button at the end of each article will return you to the landing page. Clicking on from the landing page will move you on into the next section of the annual report, so that if the landing page is p48, the page beginning the next section will be page 49. It’s a structure we see all the time on websites.
My question is: what’s the best way to organise these additional pages within the pdf? I could put them all at the back of the main pdf as a separate ‘chapter’; I could maybe make a separate pdf of them with hyperlinks from the main annual report pdf to the separate one. And I imagine there are alternatives I haven’t had the wit to think of. Can anyone recommend a best practice option for me?
Thanks Community.
Chris Benge
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Chris,
I would keep this as a single document with the articles at the back of the annual report. There are several reasons for this:
#1 The PDF of the annual report would then contain all the information, including the articles. I would imagine you would like the readers to be able to keep everything they’ve read in a single file.
#2 Publish Online isn’t going to let you jump to an outside document unless it’s a HTML page. Then you’ve got the difficulty of getting back to the original annual report which PubOnline won’t let you go to a specific page.
#3 It’ll be much easier to test the links.How to do it:
#1 There’s a question as to whether you want single pages or spreads for the document. Spreads work better for the landscape view of a computer monitor. But that is going to confuse readers. In the PDF the page you think is page 4, will be page 3 in the PDF. Same confusion with PubOnline.
I would choose single pages.#2 Put buttons on the masters for all the pages in the annual report. The first button should send the reader back one page. The second button should send the reader ahead one page. But you’ve got a little stumbling block to have the third button send the reader to jump to the landing page. If the landing page is the first or last page of the document, then you’re OK because there is an action for PDF buttons to go to the first or last page of a document.
#3 But if the landing page isn’t the first or last page, you’re going to have to define the landing page as a Hyperlink destination. Then the third button can be set to go to the Hyperlink Destination.
#4 Define the start of each article as a Hyperlink Destination. Then put a button on the annual report page that would send the reader to the article.
#5 Define the page that has the button created in step #4 as another Hyperlink Destination. Then put a button on the end of the article that would send the reader back to the page where they left off. Or a button on the article page that sends the reader back to the landing page.
#6 If you want two different landing pages, you’re going to HAVE to use Hyperlink Destination. Remember, you define the destination first, then create a button to go to it.
#7 One thing I’m wondering about. Why did you mention “hidden” pages. These article pages are going to be visible for anyone who just barrels through the PDF. Is it important that they are hidden? If so, let me think about how I would handle that.
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Chris,
I would keep this as a single document with the articles at the back of the annual report. There are several reasons for this:
#1 The PDF of the annual report would then contain all the information, including the articles. I would imagine you would like the readers to be able to keep everything they’ve read in a single file.
#2 Publish Online isn’t going to let you jump to an outside document unless it’s a HTML page. Then you’ve got the difficulty of getting back to the original annual report which PubOnline won’t let you go to a specific page.
#3 It’ll be much easier to test the links.How to do it:
#1 There’s a question as to whether you want single pages or spreads for the document. Spreads work better for the landscape view of a computer monitor. But that is going to confuse readers. In the PDF the page you think is page 4, will be page 3 in the PDF. Same confusion with PubOnline.
I would choose single pages.#2 Put buttons on the masters for all the pages in the annual report. The first button should send the reader back one page. The second button should send the reader ahead one page. But you’ve got a little stumbling block to have the third button send the reader to jump to the landing page. If the landing page is the first or last page of the document, then you’re OK because there is an action for PDF buttons to go to the first or last page of a document.
#3 But if the landing page isn’t the first or last page, you’re going to have to define the landing page as a Hyperlink destination. Then the third button can be set to go to the Hyperlink Destination.
#4 Define the start of each article as a Hyperlink Destination. Then put a button on the annual report page that would send the reader to the article.
#5 Define the page that has the button created in step #4 as another Hyperlink Destination. Then put a button on the end of the article that would send the reader back to the page where they left off. Or a button on the article page that sends the reader back to the landing page.
#6 If you want two different landing pages, you’re going to HAVE to use Hyperlink Destination. Remember, you define the destination first, then create a button to go to it.
#7 One thing I’m wondering about. Why did you mention “hidden” pages. These article pages are going to be visible for anyone who just barrels through the PDF. Is it important that they are hidden? If so, let me think about how I would handle that.
OH, BTW, the buttons don’t have to be buttons. You can make selected text a link to go to the Hyperlink Destination.
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Thanks Sandee for your customary thoroughness! For some reason I wasn’t auto-notified about this post, so completed the job thinking that no one had responded. I more or less followed your suggestions, however: https://indd.adobe.com/view/fd31966a-d1e5-4a08-a33f-4b3467b4a0b0
However, I am still interested in how far your ingenuity stretches to propose an equivalent to website pages which can only be linked to and back from with buttons/hyperlinks. My client wanted to present a slim report (46pp in total), while hiding additional pages from the main structure which could only be linked to from ‘landing’ pages — pp 33, 39 and 40 in the report. But of course a pdf ‘tips its hand’, telling anyone reading that there are actually 85pp in total.
(You may notice that I based my interactive pdf’s navigation on InDesign Magazine’s former design, which I far prefer to the current iteration in terms of easy navigability.)
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