Buttons can be added to our Indesign documents to make the experience more interactive for the recipient. We show you how in our Adobe Indesign training courses.
You can create buttons in Photoshop or Illustrator and import into Indesign. Alternatively Indesign has a set of pre-built interactive buttons that you can import into your document. To add, for example, arrow buttons that navigate from page to page first create a 6 page document in landscape format and add some content to each page. Make the Colour Mode RGB for screen viewing.
Then go to Window > Interactive > Buttons & Forms. Then to the panel options fly-out list on the top right and choose Sample Buttons & Forms. Scroll down the list to the bottom and choose buttons 151 and 152. Next go to your Master Page by double-clicking on it and simply drag and drop the two arrow buttons to the bottom of the Master page.
Select one of the arrows and note in the Buttons panel the command On Release or Tap go to Next Page is already built in. (Note you can also convert objects to buttons via the bottom right of the panel.) Also note the appearance of the button on rollover.
Click on the other arrow button and note a similar setup except this one will Go to Previous Page.
To test that your buttons are working go to File > Export > SWF or Interactive PDF > OK. And the file will open in a default browser. Test that the arrows and page transitions work.
There are many other types of buttons in the Buttons & Forms panel – the best way to discover how they work is by testing them as we’ve done here with the arrow buttons.
More tips and techniques can be found at Adobe user groups which meet regularly in most capital cities, and are free forums for designers to discuss topics and the latest Indesign features. See also many examples of our own clients’ work on our Facebook page.
Other related Indesign Blog Posts:
Indesign buttons
Mar22