Monday, February 18, 2008

Build PDF tooltips inside InDesign

A client recently asked if there was a way to add PDF "tooltips" to a page, so that when a reader hovers over an acronym, a tooltip appears that defines the acronym. I put my thinking cap on, and developed a technique for adding these tooltips right in InDesign. It seemed like a neat technique, so I wrote it up for InDesign Magazine. You can download a reprint of the article here: Build PDF Tooltips Inside InDesign (1.7mb PDF file). (InDesign Magazine is an excellent resource. If you don't already subscribe, you should! See the last page of the PDF for a special subscription rate.)

5 comments:

Jan Krans-Plaisier said...

The PDF doesn't work for me. I get an error message when I try to open it.

Keith Gilbert said...

Oops. My mistake. I've fixed the post, so the URL For the PDF is now correct. Thanks for pointing out the problem, Jan.

Philipp said...

Hi, I've read the article and noticed this doesn't work in most pdf readers because it is javascript based. Do you know another approach that doesn't have resort to apocryphal features? Anyways, thanks for the insight, Philipp

Keith Gilbert said...

@Philipp: Sorry, I don't know of any other way to do this. This approach works in all versions of the Adobe Reader, as well as Apple's Preview application, but like you say, may not work with some other third-party readers I suppose.

Unknown said...

Internet Explorer doesn't help to open the link, please use Crome or Firefox indeed