Chapter 33: Interactive Document Setup

Overview

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

You create interactive documents just as you create a print document. InDesign's interactive functions work with those traditional capabilities ‚ there's no special "interactive" mode to work under.

Note ‚  

InDesign CS no longer lets you export documents to HTML format, the standard format for the Web. (This may be because Adobe has a separate product meant to create Web pages.) That's too bad for publishers who wanted to convert their print layouts to a Web format, but because few publishers actually create their Web content directly from their print files, it will have limited effect. Instead, most publishers will do what they've long done ‚ export or copy text from the final print document, then import that text and associated graphics (converted from print standards such as TIFF and EPS to Web standards such as GIF and JPEG) into a Web-creation program like Macromedia Dreamweaver or Adobe GoLive, using Web-specific templates and formatting. Publishers typically haven't directly converted their print documents to Web formats, even in programs like QuarkXPress that have had plug-in software to do so, because the horizontally oriented, single-column, typographically plain Web page didn't allow for easy adaptation of print publications ' vertically oriented, multicolumn, typographically sophisticated content. For many publishers, it was easier to start the Web layout from scratch than convert from print layouts.

Cross-Reference ‚  

Chapter 32 covers how to export InDesign documents to PDF format.