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Buttons and Actions
Though InDesign introduced a button tool a few versions back, InDesign CS5 improves on this capability with the introduction of the new interactive features. The most notable change is the renaming of states to appearances in the Button panel. This labeling change makes the ides of button rollovers distinguishable from the new Multi-State objects, discussed later.
Any object in InDesign can have button properties assigned to it. After selecting an object, click on the Convert to Button Object from the Button panel. With the panel opened, activate the rollover appearance to make any design change that will take effect when the user rolls his mouse over the button. There is also an appearance option for Down, which allows you to change the appearance when a user clicks on the button. When you select, or activate, an appearance when a button is selected, InDesign allows you to change any aspect of the button in that appearance. This includes such things as changing text, imported artwork, strokes and fills, and even changes to effects, including drop shadows, gradient overlays, and transparency settings, to name a few.
The Actions section, however, is where the real purpose of buttons is realized. By using a very intuitive interface, InDesign allows you to add the interactive programming to your button. An action can be assigned to various mouse interactions. The most common is the On Mouse Release, which is when the user clicks on your button and then releases the mouse button. The is the most common because if a user click on the button, then moves the mouse away and releases the button, the action will not trigger. This is consistent with most user experiences.
Once you have decided which mouse behavior to assign your action to, InDesign provides a drop-down menu allowing you to select from a range of interactive capabilities (see Figure 2). This menu list groups actions common to both PDF and SWF at the top, then separates the remaining actions into SWF only and PDF only.
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If you want to be able to publish a single InDesign document to both formats, be sure to choose actions that work in both formats, otherwise you can focus on the actions specific to your intended export format.