Multimedia Project Basics
In This Chapter
ᮣ Taking advantage of hyperlinks and cross-references
ᮣ Going the extra mile with sounds and video
ᮣ Getting fancy with buttons, rollovers, and other actions
ᮣ Exporting Flash files, PDFs, and eBook files
ᮣ Getting your work to the Web
Publishing is no longer about just print. Documents exist in electronic form as well, delivered on CD, from file servers, and over the Web. And the definition of “document” has changed, going from static text and images to a wider palette of media types, including sound and video, and a host of new actions — think hyperlinks, animated rollovers based on your louse movement, and buttons that initiate actions like turning a page or playing a movie.
Over the years, InDesign has steadily added to its dynamic repertoire. InDesign CS4 adds a bunch more: slideshow-style page transitions, Flash file export, and a cross-reference capability.
Using Hyperlinks
Web pages, Flash files, and PDF files can include hyperlinks, the clickable hot spots that direct a browser to open a new file or page. It’s a whole new way to deliver related contents through an active cross-reference. And InDesign lets you add hyperlinks to your documents, so if they’re exported to the PDF
or Web formats, those links are clickable.
InDesign uses its Hyperlinks panel (Window➪Interactive➪Hyperlinks) to add, edit, and delete hyperlinks. In a sense, a hyperlink is a character attribute —
it’s applied to selected text. Figure 24-1 shows the Hyperlinks panel and its flyout menu.
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Delete Selected Hyperlinks or Cross-References
Create New Cross-Reference
Go to Desination
Figure 24-1:
The
Hyperlinks
panel and
Go to Source
its flyout
menu. Update Cross-References
Create New Hyperlink
InDesign CS4 overhauls the Hyperlinks panel, with many new and changed options.
Creating hyperlinks
Although the process is straightforward, InDesign’s terminology can make it a very confusing on how to start. You first create a hyperlink destination — the place a hyperlink goes to, or its target — by choosing New Hyperlink Destination from the Hyperlinks panel’s flyout menu. Figure 24-2 shows the dialog box. You give the destination a name in the Name field and then choose from one of the three options in the Type menu:
ߜ
URL: This option is a Web page address (the official name is Uniform Resource Locator), as shown in the New Hyperlink Destination dialog box in Figure 24-2. If you select this option, InDesign displays the URL
field in which you type the Web address.
ߜ
Page: This option lets you specify a specific page in a selected document. If you select this option, InDesign provides a Page field in which you specify the page number to open in the selected document, as well as the Zoom Setting pop-up menu, which lets you select how the page is displayed. (Options are Fixed, meaning at the default size in Adobe 34_388488-ch24.indd 366
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Reader; Fit View; Fit in Window; Fit Width; Fit Height; Fit Visible; and Inherit Zoom, which uses the current zoom setting in Adobe Reader.) ߜ
Text Anchor: This option lets you specify a specific piece of text (the selected text) in the selected document.
Figure 24-2:
The New
Hyperlink
Destination
dialog box’s
three variants are
(from top
to bottom)
URL, Text
Anchor, and
Page.
With the destinations defined, you can now create the hyperlinks to them (the hyperlink sources).
To create a hyperlink source:
1. Select the text or frame you want to be a hyperlink’s source (what the reader clicks to go to the link) and then choose New Hyperlink from the Hyperlinks panel’s flyout menu.
The New Hyperlink dialog box, shown in Figure 24-3, appears.
2. Use the Link To pop-up menu to determine what you’re hyperlinking to.
You have the same three options as in the New Hyperlink Destination dialog box’s Type menu — Page, Text Anchor, and URL — as well as three new ones: Email, File, and Shared Destination.
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Figure 24-3:
The New
Hyperlink
dialog box.
Email lets you enter an e-mail address, as well as a default subject for that e-mail, if you like. File lets you point to any file and make that into a link; of course, any file you link to this way needs to be something your reader has the software to open. Shared Destination lets you select an InDesign document, including the current one, and then select from any destinations of any type defined in it.
With the URL, Email, and File options, you can enable the Shared Destination check box, which makes the new hyperlink visible to other users through the Shared Destination option in the Linked To pop-up menu.
3. In the Character Style section, you can tell InDesign to apply a specific character style to the hyperlinked text.
4. In the Appearance section, you can control how the hyperlink appears on-screen:
• Use the Type pop-up menu to choose Invisible Rectangle or Visible Rectangle. The Invisible Rectangle option gives no visual indication that the text contains a hyperlink, except that the mouse pointer becomes a hand icon when the reader maneuvers through
the document. (You’d typically pick this option when you’ve
used blue underline as a character attribute for the hyperlink text to mirror the standard Web way of indicating a hyperlink.) The Visible Rectangle option puts a box around the text using the following four settings. (They’re grayed out if Invisible Rectangle is selected.)
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• The Highlight pop-up menu lets you choose how the source text or frame is highlighted: None, Invert (reserve the foreground and background colors), Outline (places a line around the source), and Inset (places a line around the source, but inside any frame stroke; for text, it’s the same as Outline).
• The Color pop-up menu displays Web-safe colors, as well as any colors you defined in the document.
• The Width pop-up menu lets you choose the thickness of the line used in the Outline and Inset options from the Highlight pop-up menu. The choices are Thin, Medium, and Thick.
• You can choose the type of line in the Style pop-up menu: Solid or Dashed.
5. When you’re done defining the hyperlink source, click OK.
If your text includes a valid hyperlink, such as www.InDesignCentral.com, you can select it and create a URL hyperlink automatically by choosing New Hyperlink from URL in the Hyperlinks panel’s flyout menu.
After your hyperlink sources are defined, you can easily apply them by selecting text and clicking an existing hyperlink source from the Hyperlinks panel. You can also jump to the source or destination by selecting the desired hyperlink in the Hyperlinks panel and choosing either Go to Source or Go to Destination from the flyout menu or click the Go to Hyperlink Source or Go to Hyperlink Destination iconic buttons at the bottom of the panel. These “go to” options make a handy way to verify the links are correct. Remember that I said that InDesign’s hyperlinks feature is confusing? Well, you may have noticed that when creating hyperlink sources, you see a section in the dialog box where you indicate what kind of hyperlink you’re creating. Hmmm. That means that when you’re creating hyperlink sources, you’re also creating hyperlink destinations — which you are. So what’s the point of the New Hyperlink Destinations dialog box covered in the previous section? It’s to create destinations before you have a place to link them from, at least for the three types of links supported by the New Hyperlink Destination dialog box: URLs, text anchors, and pages in the current document. So, when you want to add hyperlinks to existing text and objects, use New Hyperlink. When you want to create hyperlinks to be applied later, use New Hyperlink Destination.
While we’re at it, also keep in mind one more intricacy of using InDesign’s hyperlink destinations: The Shared Destination option in the Link To pop-up menu in the New Hyperlink dialog box lets you choose any previously created hyperlink destinations in the document selected in the Document pop-up menu — both those created via the New Hyperlink Destination dialog box and those created via the New Hyperlinks dialog box.
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Where hyperlinks will work
Being able to create hyperlinks in InDesign is
in an external document and those to
great. But be aware that not all links will be
an e-mail address. Also, any hyperlinks
preserved in your exported documents. Here’s
that appear in or over objects that have
what is kept for each type of Web or multimedia
transparency applied will not be retained.
file you can export:
ߜ Web pages: Only hyperlinks applied to text
ߜ PDF files: All hyperlinks are retained except
selections (not to objects such as frames or
those that specify a specific page in an
graphics) are retained, and even then only
external document.
hyperlinks to files, to anchored text in the
ߜ
current document, to Web addresses, and
eBook files: No hyperlinks are retained for
to e-mail addresses are retained. Also, text
objects (such as frames). For hyperlinks
anchor destination links in the document
applied to text selections, hyperlinks to files,
(including bookmarks) are retained.
to anchored text in the current document,
to Web addresses, and to e-mail addresses
As you can see, InDesign’s Hyperlinks panel
are retained.
lets you create more kinds of links than you can
ߜ
actually use in exported documents. That’s a
Flash files: All hyperlinks are retained pity.
except those that specify a specific page
Modifying and deleting hyperlinks
To modify hyperlink sources: Choose Hyperlink Options from the Hyperlinks panel’s flyout menu to open the Hyperlink Options dialog box, which has the same options as the New Hyperlink dialog box, shown in Figure 24-3, to modify the source. Similarly, to modify hyperlink destinations, choose Hyperlink Destination Options from the palette menu to open the Hyperlink Destination Options dialog box and then select the target from the Name pop-up menu. The Hyperlink Destination Options dialog box’s options are the same as the New Hyperlink Destination dialog box, shown in Figure 24-2. You can change the source text or frame by selecting it, clicking the hyperlink name in the Hyperlinks panel, and finally choosing Reset Hyperlink from the panel’s flyout menu. To change the target for a hyperlink to an InDesign document, choose Update Hyperlink from the flyout menu (press and hold Option or Alt to select a file that is not open).
To delete a hyperlink target, choose it in the Hyperlink Destination Options dialog box and then click Delete. (Click Delete All to delete all targets defined in the document.)
To delete a hypertext source, select it in the Hyperlinks panel and then choose Delete Hyperlink from the flyout menu or click the Delete Selected Hyperlinks iconic button at the bottom of the panel.
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When you export your InDesign files to PDF files (choose File➪Export [Ô+E
or Ctrl+E], and choose Adobe PDF from the Format pop-up menu), be sure to select the Hyperlinks option in the Include section of the General pane in the Export PDF dialog box. If you export to the XHTML format to create a Web page from your InDesign document (File➪ Export for Dreamweaver), the hyperlinks are included automatically. (And note that you don’t need to use Adobe’s Dreamweaver Web-editing software to work on these exported Web pages; any HTML editor or text editor will do.)
Working with cross-references
InDesign CS4 uses the Hyperlinks panel to add a related capability: crossreferences. Automated cross-references are used just for text, such as to automatically keep page numbers and chapter titles updated in text such as see page 227 and Learn more about color in the chapter “All about Color.”
To work with cross-references, you have two choices for their “to” locations. You can specify specific locations by adding text anchors in your documents using the hyperlinks destination feature described in the previous section. Then you select that text anchor in the New Cross-Reference dialog box. Or you can just choose from a list of paragraphs and make the cross-reference link to that selected paragraph in the New Cross-Reference dialog box. You open the New Cross-Reference dialog box, shown in Figure 24-4, by choosing Insert Cross-Reference from the Hyperlink s panel’s flyout menu or by clicking its Create New Cross-Reference iconic button.
In the Linked To pop-up menu, choose Text Anchor if your “to” destination is a text anchor. If you want to select a specific paragraph instead, choose Paragraph; InDesign shows all the first words of each paragraph in the document so that you can scroll through the list and choose the desired one. You can also filter that list by choosing from the styles at left; only paragraphs with the selected style appear (so, for example, you can see just headings by choosing the paragraph style for your headings).
Use the Cross-Reference Format section of the New Cross-Reference dialog box to control what text displays for that cross-reference. You can be as basic as the page number (note that the word page appears with it automatically) or as complex as, for example, showing the full paragraph text (such as a heading) and the page number.
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Figure 24-4:
The New
CrossReference
dialog box
and a crossreference
in text (to
its left).
You can create your own cross-reference formats and modify the existing ones by using the Cross-Reference Formats dialog box shown in Figure 24-5. This is an expert feature, so I don’t cover it in detail, but feel free to experiment. To open that dialog box, click the button to the right of the Format pop-up menu in the New Cross-Reference dialog box (handy when you want to create a new format as you are adding a cross-reference) or choose Define CrossReference Formats from the Hyperlinks panel’s flyout menu. You can also edit an existing format this way.
Figure 24-5:
The CrossReference
Formats
dialog box.
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The basic procedure for a cross-reference format is to add the text you want to display for any cross-references using the format combined with the codes for the text that is added and updated automatically. Use the iconic pop-up menu (the + symbol) to the right of the Definition shown in Figure 24-5 to select those codes. The iconic pop-up menu below it (the @ symbol) lets you choose special characters, such as em spaces. You can also have a character style applied to the cross-reference text as part of that format using the Character Style for Cross-Reference option.
You can control how the cross-reference appears using the Appearance section’s controls. They work just like the Appearance controls in the New Hyperlinks dialog box, covered in the previous section.
To edit an existing cross-reference, choose Cross-Reference Options from the Hyperlinks panel’s flyout menu; it’s identical to the New Cross-References dialog box.
Adding bookmarks
PDF files use something called bookmarks to
a bookmark item, Adobe Reader or Acrobat
help readers find information in the file. In a PDF
brings you to the page the bookmark refers to
file, a bookmark list acts like a table-of-contents
(see figure).
list in a printed book, except that if you click
When you export to PDF, as explained in the
of contents. Open the Bookmarks panel
“Exporting PDF Files” section later in this chap(Window➪Interactive➪Bookmarks) and then ter, you can tell InDesign to take any table of
choose what you want to bookmark. To do so,
contents set for the document and create PDF
simply select some text or an object (frame or
bookmarks from it. (Chapter 20 explains how to
line); if nothing is selected, the bookmark is to
set up tables of contents.)
the current page. Then choose New Bookmark
from the Bookmarks panel’s flyout menu or
But you can add your own independent bookclick the Add Bookmarks iconic button — the marks in addition to whatever is in the table
(continued)
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(continued)
page icon — at the bottom of the panel. After
a meaningful name (see figure); this name
you create the bookmark, choose the Rename
appears in the Bookmarks pane in Adobe
Bookmark option in the flyout menu to give it
Reader or Acrobat.
If you want a bookmark to be a subentry of ߜ Choose Go to Selected Bookmark to jump another bookmark — the equivalent to a
to that page in your InDesign document.
second-level or third-level headline in a table of
An easier way is to simply double-click the
contents — make sure that, before you create
bookmark entry in the pane.
the bookmark, you select a bookmark in the ߜ Choose Sort Benchmarks to sort benchBookmarks panel. Any new bookmark is made mark subentries — this alphabetizes
a child of the selected bookmark.
second-level, third-level, and other pageThe other Bookmarks panel flyout menu options based subentries, and it sorts in order of
are straightforward:
appearance on the page any text-and/
ߜ
or object-based entries. It does not sort
Choose Delete Bookmark to delete any
the top-level bookmarks, which appear in
bookmarks selected in the panel. (You can
sequential order from the beginning of the
also click the Delete Bookmarks iconic
document.
button — the trashcan icon — at the bottom
of the panel.)
Adding Sounds and Video
InDesign treats movies and sounds like any other file: You place them with the Place command (File➪Place [Ô+D or Ctrl+D]) into your layout. Movies display as an image based on their first frame, while sounds display as a speaker icon and print and export that way.
InDesign’s sound and movie format support is limited:
ߜ
InDesign can open QuickTime (MOV files) and Microsoft AVI movies, so be sure your movies are in one of those formats. These movies can be used only in exported PDF (Version 1.6 and later) files.
ߜ
InDesign also supports Adobe Flash animations (SWF files), though it can export those only to PDF Version 1.6 and later files, as well as for use in Flash files and HTML pages.
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ߜ
For sounds, it supports just the Apple AIFF and Microsoft WAV formats and can export them only to PDF files.
To control how a movie behaves and what control the reader has, choose Object➪Interactive➪ Movie Options. For sounds, choose Object➪ Interactive➪
Sound Options. The Movie Options dialog box or Sound Options dialog box appears, as appropriate. Figure 24-6 shows them both.
A faster way to set movie and sound settings is to double-click the frame containing the movie or sound.
These movie and sound features are expert options, but ones that you should play with to see what you can do with them.
Figure 24-6:
At left:
the Movie
Options
dialog box.
At right:
the Sound
Options
dialog box.
Adding Buttons, Rollovers,
and Other Actions
You’ve no doubt seen those cool Web pages where as your mouse passes over an object, it changes color or makes something pop up on screen. Or clicking it makes a movie play or other action occur. InDesign lets you add such capabilities to your documents destined for export to the Web, Flash files, or PDF files. You set up these actions and states in the Button panel (Window➪Interactive➪
Button). Figure 24-7 shows the panel, with the Event pop-up menu, the flyout menu, and the Actions pop-up menu all active (I composited this image; only one can display at a time in real life).
376 Part VII: Printing and Multimedia Essentials
Figure 24-7:
The Button
panel (left),
its flyout
menu
(center),
and the
Actions
pop-up
menu (right).
The Buttons panel replaces the States panel from previous versions of InDesign and adds a few new states to match what Web browsers can support. Also, InDesign CS4 no longer has a Button tool to create buttons; instead, you convert any selected item to a button.
Although the Button panel and related controls are expert features, I describe the basic principles here.
The first thing you need to do is create a button — something for a reader to click. Any object can be a button, so choose the desired object with the Selection tool and then click the Convert Object to Button iconic button at the bottom of the Button panel or choose Object➪Interactive➪Convert to Button. The object then appears in the Button panel with an initial [Normal] state appearance, which is how it will appear unless the reader does something with it. (You can also choose an existing button from a library that InDesign includes; just choose Sample Buttons from the Button panel’s flyout menu.) Each button has three possible state appearances: [Normal], [Click], and
[Rollover]. To add a [Click] state, choose On Click from the Event pop-up menu and then select [Click] and enable its appearance. (Click the empty box to its left; if the box displays an eye icon, the state will be visible when the user clicks the button.) You can change the button’s color in its [Click]
state by just clicking a swatch from the Swatches panel (Windows➪Swatches,
[F5]) when the [Click] state is selected in the Button panel. You can also use the Stroke panel (Windows➪Stroke [Ô+F10 or Ctrl+F10]) or the Effects panel (Window➪Effects [Shift+Ô+F10 or Ctrl+Shift+F10]) to adjust the button’s
[Click] state appearance.
Use the same technique to adjust the appearance of the [Rollover] state (used with the On Rollover option in the Event pop-up menu. You can use any (or several) of the states with the other Event pop-up menu options; whatever has the eye icon displayed for that option is what the button will display when the user takes the designated action.
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Most of the events are self-explanatory — On Click, On Rollover, On Roll Off, and On Release — but two are not: On Blur and On Focus. These rarely used events essentially let you highlight (focus) specific frames on a Web page or dehighlight (blur) them. All these terms are used by Web-editing programs, such as Adobe Dreamweaver, that expert users typically use.
In addition, each event can have one or more actions assigned to it, using the + iconic button below the Event pop-up menu. (Use the – iconic button to remove a selected action.) Clicking the + button displays the Actions pop-up menu, shown in Figure 24-7. You choose the desired action for the current event and then set up its specifics in the dialog box that appears. By combining state appearances, events, and actions, you can create a truly interactive document. Once done, the next step is to export the document to the desired electronic format.
Exporting Flash Files
InDesign CS4 now lets you export documents, or specific pages, as Flash files. When you choose File➪Export (Ô+E or Ctrl+E), you get a dialog box, where among the various Format pop-up menu (Mac) or Save as Type pop-up menu (Windows) options are two Flash options: Adobe Flash CS4 Pro (XFL) and SWF. ߜ
An XFL file is one that Adobe Flash Professional CS4 can open for further work, and is the option you should pick if the InDesign-exported file is meant to be the starting point for your Flash file.
ߜ
A SWF file is a ready-to-play file that can contain animations or, in the case of those generated from InDesign, rollovers and actions; you can’t edit a SWF file. SWF files are playable by the Adobe Flash Player, either directly on a computer or via a Web browser.
Figure 24-8 shows the Export dialog boxes for each Flash option. The options let you control the size of the exported file, which pages are exported, how text is handled (kept as Flash text, meaning it’s editable in Flash Pro and embeds the fonts, or converted either to vector images or to bitmapped images), and whether pages are rasterized (converted to bitmapped images). The XFL export has additional controls over which interactive effects, such as buttons and hyperlinks, are exported, as well as how images are compressed. 34_388488-ch24.indd 377
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378 Part VII: Printing and Multimedia Essentials
Figure 24-8:
The Export
Adobe
Flash CS4
Professional
(XFL) dialog
box (left)
and the
Export SWF
dialog box
(right)
Exporting PDF Files
Sometimes you want to create a PDF file for distribution on the Web, on a CD, on a corporate intranet, or even by e-mail. PDF creation is a simple task in InDesign. First choose File➪Export (Ô+E or Ctrl+E) and then choose Adobe PDF in the Format pop-up menu (Mac) or Save as Type pop-up menu (Windows).
If you’re working with the InDesign book feature (see Chapter 22), you can export all of the book’s chapters to a single PDF file from an open book’s panel by using the Export Book to PDF option in its flyout menu. (If one or more documents in the book are selected in the panel, the menu option changes to Export Selected Documents to PDF.) The setup options are the same as for exporting individual documents.
After you select Adobe PDF in the Export dialog box’s Formats pop-up menu and give the file a name and location in the File Name and Save in areas, click Save to get the Export Adobe PDF dialog box, shown in Figure 24-9. The dialog box has six panes; the General pane is displayed when you open the dialog box. Several options are accessible from all six panes. If you know how to use Acrobat Professional, you know how to set up your PDF export. If not, consult with a local expert because PDF export options are as complex and job-specific as the print options I cover in Chapter 23. Some basic options are available in all the panes, and you should feel comfortable setting them on your own:
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ߜ
Adobe PDF Preset pop-up menu: This pop-up menu lets you select from both predefined sets of PDF-export settings (similar to the printer presets covered earlier in this chapter), as well as any presets you or someone else may have created. ߜ
Compatibility pop-up menu: This pop-up menu lets you choose which PDF file version to save the file as. Your options are Acrobat 4 (PDF 1.3), Acrobat 5 (PDF 1.4), Acrobat 6 (PDF 1.5), Acrobat 7 (PDF 1.6), Acrobat 8
(PDF 1.7), and Acrobat 9 (PDF 1.8).
Choosing Acrobat 4 (PDF 1.3) is the best option for plain documents that you want to distribute on CD or over the Web because it ensures the broadest number of people will be able to view the file. But it also limits the ability to use some features, particularly those that protect the document from unauthorized usage such as copying its contents.
Choose a later version if you need specific features. For example, choose Acrobat 6 (PDF 1.5) or later if your document uses transparency or highlevel security settings. Use Acrobat 7 (PDF 1.6) or later for files with video, audio, and other multimedia features.
ߜ
Save Preset button: Click this option to save any settings made in the Export Adobe PDF dialog box as a new preset. (You can also define new PDF presets by choosing File➪PDF Export Presets➪Define.)
ߜ
Export button: Click this option to create the PDF file based on the settings that you selected in the various panes.
Figure 24-9:
The General
pane of
the Export
Adobe PDF
dialog box.
380 Part VII: Printing and Multimedia Essentials
The General pane
Use the General pane, shown in Figure 24-9, to determine what is exported. The Pages option gives you the same flexibility as the Print dialog box’s Pages option, which I cover in Chapter 23. Similarly, the Spread option works like the same-name option in the Print dialog box, also covered in that chapter. In the Options section, you can select the following options:
ߜ
Embed Page Thumbnails: Select this option if you’re creating a PDF file to be viewed on-screen. Thumbnails help people to more easily navigate your document in the Adobe Reader program. However, if you’re sending the PDF files to a service bureau or commercial printer for printing, you don’t need to generate the thumbnails.
ߜ
Optimize for Fast Web View: Always select this option. It minimizes file size without compromising the output.
ߜ
Create Tagged PDF: Select this option to embed XML tag information into the PDF file. It’s useful for XML-based workflows and Adobe eBooks. If you don’t know what XML or eBooks are, you don’t need to select this option. ߜ
View PDF after Exporting: Select this option if you want to see the results of the PDF export as soon as the export is complete. Typically, however, you shouldn’t select this option because you’ll likely have other things you want to do before launching Adobe Reader (or the full Acrobat program, if you own it) to proof your files.
ߜ
Create Acrobat Layers: If you selected Acrobat 6 (PDF 1.5) or later in the Compatibility pop-up menu, you can select this option, which outputs any InDesign layers to separate layers in Acrobat. (Acrobat 6 was the first version of Acrobat to support layers.) If you choose an earlier version in the Compatibility option, Create Acrobat Layers is grayed out.
ߜ Export Layers: This new pop-up menu gives you additional control over how layers marked as nonprinting are exported to the PDF file. It used to be that if you marked a layer as nonprinting, you’d have to leave the Export Adobe PDF dialog box to open the Layers panel to make it exportable. Now, you can skip that step and override layers’ nonprinting status using this pop-up menu. The default option, Visible & Printable Layers, honors your layers’ printing status. Visible Layers exports all visible layers, including those marked as nonprinting. All Layers exports both visible and hidden layers, including those marked as nonprinting. (See Chapter 5 for more on layers.)
In the Include section, you set what elements of the document are included in the PDF file. You can select the following options:
ߜ
Bookmarks: This option takes InDesign table-of-contents (TOC) information and preserves it as bookmarks in the exported PDF file. (See Chapter 20 for details on TOCs.)
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ߜ
Hyperlinks: This choice preserves any hyperlinks added in InDesign. Otherwise, the hyperlinks are converted to standard text in the PDF file. (Chapter 22 explains how to create hyperlinks in InDesign.)
ߜ
Visible Guides and Grids: This setting includes the on-screen guides and grids in the output version — an option you’d use only when creating PDF
files meant to be used as designer examples, not for readers or for prepress. ߜ
Non-Printing Objects: This option includes any objects marked as Nonprinting through the Attributes pane. (Choose Window➪Attributes.) ߜ
Interactive Elements: This option preserves interactive objects, such as buttons, rather than convert them to static graphics.
ߜ
Multimedia: This pop-up menu lets you control how embedded sound and video are handled. This option is available only if you choose Acrobat 6 (PDF 1.5) or later in the Compatibility pop-up menu. The options are Use Object Settings, Link All, or Embed All. In InDesign, you can embed a sound or movie file, or link to one. This option lets you override the individual settings and make all such objects embedded or linked. Security pane
The Security pane is used to protect your documents from unauthorized usage or copying — something you should strongly consider doing for PDF
files distributed on the Web or in other electronic media.
To enable such protections, be sure the Require a Password to Open the Document and the Use a Password to Restrict Printing, Editing, and Other Tasks options are enabled. Here’s how their settings work:
ߜ
Encryption Level: This section’s options depend on the option set in the Compatibility pop-up menu; Acrobat 5 (PDF 1.4) and higher use High (128-Bit RC4) encryption, while earlier versions use 40-bit RC4. ߜ
Document Open Password: In this section of the Security pane, you can require a password to open the exported PDF file by selecting this option and typing a password in the associated text field. If you don’t type a password here, you’re forced to type one in a dialog box that appears later. To access protected content, recipients must use the Security pane in Acrobat. (Choose File➪Document Properties [Ô+D or Ctrl+D] in Acrobat.)
ߜ
Permissions: Here, you determine what restrictions to place on the PDF
file. Note that the following options vary based on what version of the PDF format you selected in the General pane.
•
Use a Password to Restrict Printing, Editing, and Other Tasks: You can restrict recipients’ actions by selecting this option and then specifying permissible actions by using the Printing Allowed and Changes Allowed pop-up menus, as well as selecting from among the 382 Part VII: Printing and Multimedia Essentials
options that follow. (The number of options displayed varies based on the preset chosen.) You can also require a password to allow editing of the file in another application.
•
Printing
Allowed: You can select None, Low-Resolution (150 dpi), or High Resolution. You would disable printing to ensure that the material can be read only on-screen.
•
Changes
Allowed: You can select None; Inserting, Deleting and
Rotating Pages; Filling in Form Fields and Signing; Commenting, Filling in Form Fields, and Signing; or Any Except Extracting Pages. ( Signing means using digital signatures to verify sender and recipient identities.)
•
Enable Copying of Text, Images, and Other Content: If it’s okay for recipients to use the PDF file’s objects, select this option.
• Enable Text Access of Screen Reader Devices for the Visually Impaired: If you want the file to be accessible to visually impaired recipients who use text-reader applications, select this option. This option is available only if you’re exporting to Acrobat 5 (PDF
1.4) or later.
• Enable Plaintext Metadata: For documents with metadata — authoring information associated with XML documents and Web pages —
you can make that metadata visible to Web-based search engines and similar applications by selecting this option. This option is available only if you’re exporting to Acrobat 6 (PDF 1.5) or later.
Exporting to eBook Format
Adobe has created a hybrid document format that combines some PDF and some Web capabilities, Called an eBook, it’s meant to be a way to deliver books in a rich-media way for electronic readers and via Adobe’s own Digital Editions software. Not many people use this format, so I don’t dwell on it. To export a layout to eBook format, simply choose File➪Export for Digital Editions. You get the Save As dialog box, where you choose the disk and folder to store the exported Web page, as well as the page’s filename. After you click Save, you get the Digital Editions Export Options dialog box, shown in Figure 24-10, in which you specify how InDesign converts the layout to the eBook format. Unless you’re eBook-savvy, ask your boss what settings to use. Here are the basics:
ߜ
In the General pane, you choose how to handle bulleted and numbered lists are handled (see the next section on exporting to the Web), as well as how styles are converted to the Web’s CSS format (also in the next section).
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In the Images pane, you choose how your images are converted to the Web’s GIF and JPEG formats, selecting options such as image quality and color palette.
ߜ
In the Advanced pane, you choose which flavor of the eBook format is used. (It’s called EPUB here because eBooks have the filename extension
.epub.) You also choose whether the InDesign layout’s table of contents is exported — because .epub files are typically used for electronic books, it’s likely you would export the TOC, as books typically have TOCs.
Click Export when done with your settings.
Figure 24-10:
The General
pane of
the Digital
Editions
Export
Options
dialog box.
Exporting to the Web
InDesign lets you export your layouts to the XHTML format that Web editors such as Adobe’s Dreamweaver can open for further work. (Note that you’ll usually want to do further work in a Web editor both to take advantage of Web-specific formatting options and to rework the layout to better fit the horizontal “page” size of a Web browser.)
To export a layout to XHTML format, simply choose File➪Export for Dreamweaver. (And despite the name, your files aren’t limited to use by Adobe’s Dreamweaver software; any Web editor should be able to open the files.) If you want to export just specific items on a page, select them with one of the selection tools before choosing this menu option.
384 Part VII: Printing and Multimedia Essentials
You get the Save As dialog box, where you choose the disk and folder to store the exported Web page, as well as the page’s filename. After you click Save, you get the XHTML Export Options dialog box, shown in Figure 24-11, in which you specify how InDesign converts the layout to the Web format. Unless you’re Web-savvy, ask your Web master what settings to use: ߜ
In the General pane, you choose whether to export the currently selected objects or the entire document, as well as how to handle bulleted and numbered lists. The default mappings — Map to Unordered Lists for bullets and Map to Ordered Lists for numbers — work for most sites. But you can also have InDesign convert either or both such lists into plain text rather than using the Web’s list functions.
ߜ
In the Images pane, you choose how your images are converted to the Web’s GIF and JPEG formats, selecting options such as image quality and color palette.
Figure 24-11:
The Images
pane of
the XHTML
Export
Options
dialog box.
ߜ
In the Advanced pane, you set how text formatting is converted to the Web’s version of styles, called cascading style sheets, or CSS. It’s preferable to choose External CSS as the export option, because that choice has the Web pages use a single style file that all Web pages can refer to, ensuring consistency (much like InDesign’s styles offer). Note that InDesign doesn’t create a CSS file for you; you or your Web designer must create it in a Web-editing program. Also in this pane, you can specify an external JavaScript file to link to — again, something your Web designer or programmer will have created separately.
Click Export when done with your settings.
The export process is simple, so it’s easy to forget that converting print layouts to the Web’s format is rarely a “point-and-shoot” activity. Expect your Web designer to do major work on those exported pages in his Web editing program, to optimize them for the Web environment. That’s no reflection on you or InDesign — just the reality of working in different media.