Brief 15 // DFGA // Creating buttons

As the year book has every student within the year group in it, the PDF document is pretty large. To make it easier for any user to navigate through the document and find a certain student etc, I will create buttons within the document.

The buttons can be placed anywhere within the document and when exported to the Interactive PDF format, they can be clicked on and it will take the user to the specified page.

In order for the buttons to jump to the specified page, bookmarks have to be created on these pages so when the button is clicked it has the information to send you to the correct page.

To create the bookmarks, you need to open the button and bookmarks menu. To create the bookmark, you simply select a object within the selected page and click on the create a bookmark button in the panel.

Opening the bookmark menu to displays all bookmarks within the document.  

Here you can see that I have selected the name of the student spread and in the bookmark menu the highlighted bookmark is the one that has been created. For each page that needs a bookmark I will do them all in the same way and use the title / name at the top of each of the spreads. 

Now the bookmarks have been created, I can make the buttons so that the action works. To create the button, you simply draw a shape around the text you want the button the sit over. Leaving the button with no line or fill colour means it isnt visible to the eye, but when exported it will be there when the mouse hovers over it. 

In the button menu, you convert the shape into a button and then select the action to happen when the button is clicked. For this document I have used the action > go to destination. I choose to use this one, because there are alot of buttons needed and I can specify which page by using the bookmarks created earlier. 

Once the button is created, all you do is specify which bookmark to link in with the button and it will jump to that page when exported. 

Showing the button menu and the options to choose from when creating the button within the document. 

Within the document I will create buttons for the the first two pages - student and tutor names, and content pages. The chapter title pages will also have buttons within the spreads. The whole point of having the buttons is to make it easier for the user to navigate throughout the document, creating these buttons does this and will also make it more of a interactive document for them to view.