Expert: James Fritz - 2/7/2011

Question
QUESTION: Hi, James, and thanks for your earlier answer, very helpful! (Strange script…I think I'll pass on having my entire pdf doc turned into a swf inside itself!). Looking forward to connecting on a consulting basis, but just for the record, and to keep things simple, is it possible to create an animating button that actually performs the action "Go to next page" when exported as a pdf?

I can build it in InDesign complete with rollovers etc., but actually getting it to work in Reader/Acro, not so much. The animating and rollover effect works, but not the action. Is this expecting too much from a swf (that it trigger an Acrobat menu item)?

(if it can be done, I'm OK with inserting by hand, or in Acrobat…)

Thanks again!

ANSWER: Hey David,

You can't create a button action to use the "go to page" feature for a PDF, but there is a workaround. What you need to do is a make a bookmark for that page, then use the button action "go to destination" then choose the bookmark that you made.



---------- FOLLOW-UP ----------

QUESTION: Yes, I've been using that trick, thanks to your lynda course, for going to a specific page.

But you can create a Go to Next Page action, which is what I need, no? It's right in the top list, supposedly applicable to pdfs and swfs. see attachment.

Question is, can you make such a button animate as well without spoiling the action? That turns it into a swf, right? The ones I've made look great but don't actually Go to Next Page…

Answer
Yes, you can animate a button. Just create a button and then apply the animation settings that you want. The only problem is that the animation and the resulting action will only work within that SWF file. If you plan on exporting it to a PDF, it will not work. Also, even if you export that page as a SWF, place it back into ID and then export to a PDF that page will not be aware of other pages and the buttons will not function. Buttons have to be native buttons in order for them to work inside PDFs. As soon as they become involved with a SWF, they will cease to work outside of the page that they are on.