Skip navigation
Simantel
Simantel
Currently Being Moderated

Turn scrolling frame into a button?

Dec 1, 2011 1:54 PM

Fellow DPSers,

 

I am currently experimenting with DPS trying to create an environment with several tabs. The area inside the tab is meant to display scrolling content with interactive elements (specfically video and hyperlinks) included. On top of that, when each tab is clicked, I want it to swap out the right area with content from its corresponding section. The swap is a feature that's fairly easy to do with InDesign's standard button features; however, I do not have the option to create a button from the scrolling frame. I'm assuming the overlay is conflicting somehow.

 

Trying another idea, I moved content from one of the scrolling frames into a separate InDesign document and then placing it into the scrolling frame I'd previously created. This allowed me to then create a button from that frame, but the interactivity was lost when placed. The content from the imported document works fine in the Folio preview.

 

I'm really just looking for suggestions or workarounds. I need the tabs to be controllers for the content. I figure I might be able to get around this by making them hyperlinks to different pages in the document, but I'd prefer to keep everything on one page so that there is no confusion to the user. Image inserted for reference.

 

Thanks in advance for your help.

 

Screen shot 2011-12-01 at 3.29.01 PM.png

1526 Views   11 Replies   Latest reply: Bob Bringhurst, Feb 8, 2012 2:44 PM
 
Replies
  • Frans van der Geest
    Currently Being Moderated
    1. Frans van der Geest,
    Dec 1, 2011 2:30 PM   in reply to Simantel
    Report

    MSO's? All scrolling frames in a MSO and the tabs being buttons going to a specific MSO? You could create a difefrent coloured tab for the pressed state button.

     
    |
    Mark as:
  • Simantel
    Currently Being Moderated
    2. Simantel,
    Dec 2, 2011 9:54 AM   in reply to Frans van der Geest
    Report

    Thanks for the suggestion.

     

    I tried converting one of the scrolling content sections to an MSO, but again, it's lost its interactivity. I constructed the tabs in an MSO also, and they work beautifully, but that whole "buttons appear over top of everything else" was a bit of a hassle to correct.

     

    Basically, I'm still at square one on switching out scrolling interactive content.

     

    Any other ideas?

     
    |
    Mark as:
  • Steven_Sokulski
    Currently Being Moderated
    3. Steven_Sokulski,
    Dec 2, 2011 10:34 AM   in reply to Simantel
    Report

    Unless I'm misunderstanding your stated goal, this can't be done with the current DPS toolset.

     

    Interactive elements cannot be nested.  An MSO cannot contain a scrolling frame, video, etc. and a scrolling frame cannot contain an MSO, video, etc.

     
    |
    Mark as:
  • al3nai_
    Currently Being Moderated
    4. al3nai_,
    Dec 2, 2011 10:52 AM   in reply to Simantel
    Report

    This is a very basic feature everybody is waiting for. Hopefully, Adobe will incorpprate it in future DPS updates!

     
    |
    Mark as:
  • Simantel
    Currently Being Moderated
    5. Simantel,
    Dec 2, 2011 2:38 PM   in reply to Simantel
    Report

    Thanks for your reply, Steven.

     

    I currently have video and buttons working inside the scrolling frame, it's just the added level of being able to show/hide that frame that is causing the problem. It does seem like I'm up a creek without a paddle though at this point. Hopefully the functionality comes sooner rather than later.

     
    |
    Mark as:
  • zipideedooda
    Currently Being Moderated
    6. zipideedooda,
    Dec 4, 2011 7:34 PM   in reply to Simantel
    Report

    Honestly, from my experience, that hasn't work. It's a great idea though! The only workaround would be to have the tabs be hyperlinks to other pages and those pages to have those exact graphics positioned precisely which is easily done via IND. The only downside is that those pages appear in the viewer's contents bar and the scrubber. If Adobe were to allow the designer a way to suppress both the contents bar and the scrubber from being viewable, you'd have a digital publication that would behave closer to an app than it would a magazine. That would be awesome and I hope we see that soon.

     
    |
    Mark as:
  • zipideedooda
    Currently Being Moderated
    7. zipideedooda,
    Dec 4, 2011 7:38 PM   in reply to Steven_Sokulski
    Report

    Hi Steven, with the new update released in late November, scrollable frames can contain video, audio, 360 etc.

     
    |
    Mark as:
  • Bart Van de Wiele
    Currently Being Moderated
    8. Bart Van de Wiele,
    Dec 5, 2011 4:56 AM   in reply to Simantel
    Report

    I would create several pages, one page per tab.  Then I would layout these pages with interactivity. You can change the colour of each tab per page (to show that the tab is "active" and you're viewing the content). The tabs itself would have an invisible button above it refering to those pages (using the navto:// command to link to articles).

     

    This way the tabs are just internal links to articles, and the content is on a regular page zo you won't run into the technical restrictions of interactivity in MSO's.

     
    |
    Mark as:
  • Simantel
    Currently Being Moderated
    9. Simantel,
    Dec 5, 2011 9:49 AM   in reply to Bart Van de Wiele
    Report

    Creating separate pages seems to be the only solution... I just didn't want to offer any confusion to the user. I can't seem to find it now, but I could swear I'd seen that you could disable the menu bar on the iPad when you create the PDF. I'll have to keep digging to see if I can find it again.

     
    |
    Mark as:
  • Simantel
    Currently Being Moderated
    10. Simantel,
    Feb 8, 2012 10:11 AM   in reply to Simantel
    Report

    I wanted to offer an update on this issue. Going back to the original intent of the design, I finally managed to solve the issue by turning my scrolling frame into an MSO, and then populating the content that I wanted to switch out in each state. Looked at through InDesign's Folio Preview tool, the design looks and functions exactly the way I wanted it to. Unfortunately, when uploaded to the Adobe publishing server, and in turn downloaded to the iPad, all of the content inside the scrolling frame is invisible. Oddly enough, if I tap the location of where the video would sit in the content, it still plays. Somehow it recognizes the content is there, yet simply is not showing it.

     

    This is a totally new issue that has me baffled in an exercise that has been pretty frustrating already. Does anyone kow what the issue might be? The iPad is also showing a horizontal scrollbar on the bottom despite the fact that there is only one page in the document. It does not offer a page preview, and you can't scroll to it either, but there are a couple small icons that are showing where the second page would be. One is an arrow (similar to a play button), and the other is a square with an offset stroke around it.

     

    I'm experiencing slow download speeds from Adobe's servers also, so re-uploading and re-testing is becoming a bit of time sink. Any help would be appreciated.

     
    |
    Mark as:
  • Bob Bringhurst
    3,426 posts
    May 29, 2007
    Currently Being Moderated
    11. Bob Bringhurst,
    Feb 8, 2012 2:44 PM   in reply to Simantel
    Report

    Yes, this issue was discussed in another thread. You've run across a bug in which the text from nested scrollable frames drops when it's uploaded to acrobat.com. The team is working on a fix.

     
    |
    Mark as:
Actions

More Like This

  • Retrieving data ...

Bookmarked By (0)

Answers + Points = Status

  • 10 points awarded for Correct Answers
  • 5 points awarded for Helpful Answers
  • 10,000+ points
  • 1,001-10,000 points
  • 501-1,000 points
  • 5-500 points