Adobe® InDesign® CS5 Bible

Chapter 34. Using Interactive Media and Creating PDF Documents

IN THIS CHAPTER

• Creating bookmarks

• Adding buttons and actions

• Using page transitions

• Working with audio and video objects

• Previewing interactive features

• Creating interactive PDFs and e-books

In most respects, a document is a document is a document, but in today's electronic world, documents have evolved to include more than the text and graphics that have comprised documents for centuries. Not only can you print documents the traditional way, but also you can deliver them electronically as files in the Web's HTML format, as Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) files and e-book files, and as Flash animation files. That electronic delivery format permits a degree of interactivity never possible in printed documents, including hyperlinks, automated actions, and the use of audio and video objects.

You create interactive documents — also called rich media documents and multimedia documents — just as you create print documents. InDesign's interactive functions work with those traditional capabilities; there's no special, interactive mode to work under.

InDesign's ability to export in these various rich media formats does raise some key questions as you create your multimedia documents. Theoretically, you could design a document to support all of these formats, but the reality is that not all functions work in all media: The fancy page-transition effects, for example, appear only in Flash and full-screen-view PDF files, whereas support ...