Lessons

Lesson Info

Interactive Class Note

Okay so we're going to talk about bringing our documents to life and making them interactive so a lot of times I feel like people are like what does that mean? I make a hyperlink big deal okay well there's more than just hyperlinks so before we dig in I thought I would show you an example and this is actually what we built in last year's creative apse week and it's pretty intense this is actually my pricing guide that I send out to my clients so and it's just a pdf but it's pretty fancy so for example when I e mail this to clients um let me get out of here so we can click on stuff there are buttons that you can click first of all there's a pop of menu that shows up down here so if we zoom in on this you can see that there's links here and they're all document link so I can say oh let's go to the faa cues and if I click this that jumps to the faa cues on dh so there's little interactivity that makes it almost function kind of like a website but it's a pdf so that's pretty rad these butt...

ons right here will take you to the next page this is the table of contents so these buttons will also take you around there's a lot of redundancy built in which my husband's a u ie designer so he would be happy about that there zoom buttons etcetera these are hyper link so here's like a little welcome message from me and then there's a link to my website and you could click to email me um this is really fun I was really proud of this effect so these air testimonials from past clients and when you roll over them the image turns black and white the text changes and then there's also a link to the block post from this wedding so clients can read this and then be like oh I want to see that wedding click and it'll go straight to the block which is pretty rad s so that's kind of fun and pricing page pricing faa cues and then this page here this is actually a video so we could actually click and now now it's going to connect to the internet and I don't know if it'll function in this environment there we go so whoa and their sound and everything so you get the idea we don't need to actually play it but so there's video right here in the pdf and I think that's that's really awesome it just I think it wows clients to to be able to send them this and if you think about it you know a lot of other photographers are sending their pricing information as j pegs that they made in photo shop so when I'm able to send this it really makes an impression and that's really need so we're not going to go this into detail and in this segment because we're really I really want to make people feel comfortable on we're going to stick to basics, but if you want this, I did this one last year and I think if you get the same bonus materials, it should be in there. So you actually get this document which is great and you can put all your own stuff in it so that's kind of need another one that I'll show you another pdf quick just so you can kind of understand forms we are going to be making like a mini little simple form today which is really fun so far forms are goingto let your recipient let the user actually type right into the document but you can actually type right into this document okay, so clients can actually type right in here and here's what's really? I think fun. So this is my contract. So once they when I booked me, they fill this out and then they consign it and everything there's pricing but here's what's the most fun is I actually set it up to do the math because I found that clients were having a really hard time, like figuring out sales tax and like deposits, and then there were remaining balance and even if I would tell them like how to calculate it, they didn't read it and they didn't do it and it meant more work for me later so in design makes it easy to make these so like they can go and change this and if you look as I'm clicking on these different things it's changing the numbers at the bottom ok? So like click numbers changing oh don't need sales tax turn it off it gets subtracted like that's amazing so clients can just click and actually see what they're spending and how it's working out and I just think that's super super awesome on dh then there's, you know, like legal stuff. So anyway that's a little bit of a preview of what you can really dio with forms and interactive pdf if you really want to push, push the envelope, but we're going to keep it really simple today on dh what we're going to dio we're ready for our interactive bit, so jim, we're going to need all those good things people supplied us with what we're going to dio is rather than make some corporate form, we're going to make an old school interactive seventh grade class note like mad live fill in the blank style kind of thing okay, so here is this ridiculous document that I made is just a one page thing um, it consists of this graphic of the notebook paper that's in the background and then, um these little doodles are actually made right here in in design, using the pencil tool so, like, I literally just clicked it and was like, let's put a heart here so it's scribble a little heart and then apply the default stroke and phil so just zero phil and black stroke and look at that so you can just doodle this is about as good as my illustration skills are at the moment, I'll work on that, but when I was in seventh grade, we used to write all the easily notes to each other. I don't know if that I don't know people still do that today because they text, right? So before we all have cell phones, we had class notes, so I thought we should sort of resurrect this art form from the eighties and nineties and whatever, and this is what mine looked like. These were the things I always do told these goofy little wavy lines and dots and stars, and I really liked drawing three d cubes I don't. But anyway, here it is an in design, so what we're going to do is actually create the blanks here so that the user could receive this in a pdf and then fill it out and have wait option so I think that's really fun so just to kind of take you through what we're actually looking at this is just a text box right? So this is just type like we could edit this right now is just type and then these little lines that are going to become the blanks I just made those with line tool right here so we'll just make another one because I left one missing right here so we're goingto do that I could copy one of these but then you wouldn't see the line tool in real life that's what I would do I would draw one and then just copy them all over but I'll just show you so I'm going to grab the line tool right here and I'm going to set the default stroke and phil which you know you can do that over here and your swatches to or down here or up here so there's redundancy for you it's all over the place the default settings are to have no phil and a black stroke so I'm going to set that and then I've got the line tool and I'm just going to click and drag to where I want it and then let go and if I click away looks pretty good it's a line nice right pat yourself on the back there for that one okay um so we have our line ready and what we're going to do now is convert well, let's actually get this set up a little bit we'll come back to that in a minute. The next thing here is we're going to fill these in with our the audience generated terms and then these right here are going to be checked boxes okay? So it's going to say dear pukey or whatever we go together like pb and j whenever I smile when I think of you and your and then these are the options freckles you're giggle your curls maybe or if you're jimmy, you don't have curls or hair so that you wouldn't check that box you're sending this to dio but um so we're going to create check boxes here and then it says just wanted you to know I blank you and we're going to create a combination of fit like just empty fill in the blanks then we're going to make what's called combo boxes where there's going to be a list of supplied answers or they could make their own and or just a list and then down here we're going teo make radio buttons so down here it says p s I want to sit together at lunch on dh then the choices are, of course, or maybe or better luck next time, right? So these are going to be different than check boxes because you can only select one so those air called radio boxes all right, so how the heck do we do this? Okay, step one is we need to put in the box is here and I feel like I saw one here's one that one got away from me okay, so we're going to draw the boxes and you can do that using the frame tool like I could just make a box right and assign that default stroke and phil but that looks all corporate and this is a scribbled seventh grade love note, so no corporate e looking boxes so instead I'm gonna grab that pencil tool and I'm just going teo draw and I wanted to be like kind of screw billy like this so there's a box right? And I'll click away from it so we can see it good I don't want to copy it I mean I could maybe we'll we'll hold option are all and I'll make it over here but I want this one let's flip it to maybe so it doesn't look like I copied it. You know? I always used to look for that stuff on the disney like the old cartoons and stuff I was always a lot watching the background see if they duplicated it so I don't want to duplicate stuff but let's grab our pencil and we'll make another one over here so they're very hand drawn and rough okay, so now we have those boxes those air going to become check boxes and then we need three more down here for our radio boxes so I'll d select everything grabbed my pencil tool we need a box next to duh there we go d select make one over here maybe d select make one over here their I d select in between because sometimes otherwise I just cause problems okay, so I'm de selected all right control zero or command zero is going to fit the nice document on our page so we can see what we're doing okay let's make some boxes now um we're going to do that with the frame tools so I'm gonna click here, drag this out and just like we did when we were drawing a text box or something I'm in a drop box and then I'm going to draw another box and another box and another box okay? And then I'm going to select them so we'll get out of wonderful mood so I can see I'll grab my selection tool and I'm gonna hold um the shift key down so I can shift click click click we have four text boxes, right? So how do we turn them into like form walks is well we need to open our buttons and forms panel so that's under window interactive buttons and forms and over here um we decide what type of button or form or what is this thing we've drawn this box and now we've got to tell it okay, this is going to be a well we have all four of them selected um let's make them all list boxes I guess except maybe we'll leave will leave this one let's let's just do the three and we'll come over here and we're going to make these combo boxes okay so that means that it will have a list of items and if the user would like to write in their own they could do that as well. So it's like a list or make up your own answer so we're going to say combo box so I'm gonna click that and now they don't they get this dashed line around it so that lets me know that this is a button or a form or some kind of interactive feature and it's not going to print the box is not going to show up in the final document is just there is like a space so that we know what this is okay, so now we need to assign some variables. So jim do we have our options for our dear lovebird weii sure do so I've got three of each would you like that perfect we can do three so just so you guys know so what we're doing? We've got the selected so we've we've determined that it will be a combo box and then down here below we're going to type in the list of items if you can see see the list of items that we want to appear when the user gets this for me okay so let's have it so three names for you three like lovebirds three lovebird nicknames from principal we have cuddle bunny oh I like it cuddle bunny and then I'm going to press I think if I press yeah if I press shift return or shift enter it'll put the item into the list and also returned my cursor back here okay, so we're ready for number two okay from donna we have pumpkin pumpkin or maybe is it punkin like p funk in open yeah that's good I don't know we'll put pumpkin okay and then from teddy to we have ah stud muffin oh okay so now all it means the amount of this okay? So we've typed in these three items and then we've either press shift return or if you click the little plus it will add it here so these are the three items we can sort the items alphabetically if we click sort items but they're already sorted so that was anticlimactic sorry internet try to give them to me not in alphabetical order next time okay s o that looks good actually I think we're done with that right think so okay right? So that's a simple one. Let's go here, tio peanut butter or these air the blanks we go together like on dh maybe you know what? Instead of a combo box let's maybe make thes just a list box so the user will just have a list. They don't get to write in their own, so they just have to deal with what we give them nice. All right, so I'm ready for our pair's. Alright, from joel o designer peaches and cream. Okay, so we'll type in peaches will do cream on the next round. So, peaches, I like that one that's good one and then shift return. Okay, okay. And then from teddy to we have candles. Who are you going to leave me? And I'm gonna leave you in suspense. So, jim okay, candles and then the third one everyone from abby lynn chips. Oh, I feel like I know that one candles. Oh, maybe it's birthday cake? No. Well, so I don't know. Okay, so chips and salsa maybe I'm in suspense. Ok, so now we can sort these items can really confuse. This could be like, mix and match so the others could be like peaches and sulfa or whatever we'll see, all right, so we can sort items so I'm going to go ahead and do that and now they will be alphabetical as you can see all right so we're going to the last one here and we'll change this not a combo box listens duelist box same thing okay so peaches and cream and then the next one soft music wow seventh graders getting a little bit I don't know the gonna watch it okay soft music oh I probably shouldn't okay that's all right I'm capitalizing everything shift return and then fall so and what goes better with chips then salsa yeah yea okay perfect awesome okay and we'll sort those two so sort good and we want them to be printable that's on by default so that just means once they fill out their form if they want to print it um it'll sow up so nice and it'll show up in it'll show up it's not hidden or whatever so good okay um oh and then down here we have this button here on dh let's just make this eh? We'll just make this a form I guess just a text field so anything goes in that option okay, so I blank you that could be open to your interpretations I was thinking I heart you I um respect you dearly I don't know okay let's go to our check boxes right so these guys up here these are going to be czech boxes, not radio boxes the differences his check boxes mean you can check multiple items radio boxes are one or the other, so to do this I'm gonna select all three so I'll click on one hold shift get the next and the next now you see that I've accidentally selected my type frame here, so I'm going to click to d select that might only have these three bucks then we'll go back to our buttons and forms panel and this time for type I'm going to click and I'm going to say check box boom easy it puts a checkmark in um we don't have to do anything so nice by the way, if you want to you can name these different boxes and stuff, so if I click it says name by default it's just going to call it like this box one list box too, but if you're making a really complicated form, it would be handy to name the different interactive bits so that you know what it's referring to but in this case we're just keeping it really simple. So that's okay, okay, so that's just a text field those there are three boxes up there and then down here want to sit together at lunch these you only get to have one answer, so not going to be a check box this is going to be radio buttons, so I'm goingto select all three things and then we're going to come over here and this time we're going to choose radio button so and the funny thing is you kind of have to just get used to the fact that in in design when you turn these things on and set them up it looks like we have all three check boxes on right now and we don't want that and it looks like all three radio buttons around it's just the way it shows in the document while we're building it so it's not goingto um show up that way unless you want it to so for example if I wanted these check boxes if I wanted them all on by default I could come down here and tell it tohave that selected by default so maybe I want it prompt people like oh you love they're giggle I could like put that there but I'm gonna have that just off so you can see how that works but you can also lock those things so like in my contract pdf I only have one package I don't have multiple packages I have one package and then have a couple things you can add on it so I don't want people to be ableto uncheck the one package because that's not how I operate right so you can also lock and you can say that a certain check is read only which means they can't interact with it but it it could be there because you might be including it in the math formula like my pricing on my contract so it can still be there, but they can't change it, which is nice sometimes, okay, so I think we're actually pretty done with this that was pretty simple so here's what we do next here's a little thing about forms were done with it that's great, but we're going to export this, but in order to really find to knit and tweak it and all of that, we have some clean up work that we're going to need to dio in acrobat okay, so, um this would operate just fine, but if we want, for example, like those combo boxes, we want them to be able teo type their own words in as well of as the list that we provided that has to be done an acrobat even though we called it a combo box and in design, it won't actually become a combo box till we make it such in acrobat, so there are some little things that need to be done an acrobat a lot of it can be done in in design, but depending on your form and how complicated you want it like the math formula and my contract that was done an acrobat so I build the form and in design and then fine tune some things in acrobat after the fact time so let's do that, so we're going to export this first of all, let's save it. Women talked about file saving yet what that's kind of key so let's do that? So when we say this stuff just like anything else, you're going to come up to file and I'm gonna click save let's pretend we're doing this for the first time, so I'm going to click save as so it looks like the first time I'm going to come up to desktop, of course that's where everything goes and we'll call it class. Note on down here I choose the format, so by default it's goingto have whatever your version of in design. So this is the brand new two thousand fourteen release of creative cloud so that's what's going to show up um or I could choose template what that means is just like it sounds, it will be a template. It means that the next time you open this document it's actually going to make a copy of itself so you could use it like a template and you don't have to worry about saving over your original it's kind of a nice little self preservation thing I don't use that terribly often, but I probably should or if you are saving an indesign file for someone else and they don't have the latest version of indesign you need to save it here as in design cs for or later and in parentheses it's an idea m l file eso in like the bonus materials that I made I saved everything is idea mills in case you haven't older version of indesign um but just know that you know, if I was going to just make something available to download and I don't know who's getting it, I need to make sure I save it this way so they can access it but anyway we'll go ahead and just leave it as the default so it's going to become a dot I n d d file so we'll put those on the desktop that's pretty much the only options it's really simple we hit save done and this thiss files really simple we don't really have graphics we do have the picture of the notebook paper, but I think I embedded that. So if we go to our links panel, this little icon right here tells me that this file this image is embedded, which means now I could give you this file and we don't have to worry about linc problems so it's embedded which also increases the file size so you would not really want to do that for like a wedding album or something, but here in this case it's just really simple to embed it the way you embed a link is you just select link you want in bed and you would right click uh come up here actually come to your panel menu and then it would be instead of un embed link it would say in bed like um so I do that for practice files that I make for students and stuff because just makes things a little easier otherwise we'll get errors when they open it and or I have to package the file and it's just too messy so that works really well it's pretty simple so we don't have a whole lot going on so we've saved this it's done but now we need to make it actually a form toe open an acrobat so now not just saving it now we've got exported so we're going to come up to file and we're going to choose export and we'll put it on the desktop where everything goes here's where we're going to choose pdf interactive okay some print pdf like if you make a print pdf but all it has is hyperlinks you could actually just choose print pdf but because this this have buttons and all of that then we want to go with interactive so we're going to say interactive and save and we can leave all these defaults and okay so it's going to generate it and here we are we are in uh acrobat what's maximized this okay and what is going on? Okay so here's our dear pukey whatever situation now this is a combo box right so we wanted the user to be able to choose any one of these drop down items or type in their own and actually yeah we can't type in our own yet we have to enable that so to do that I'm going to right click and uh let's actually go teo get out I'm gonna reopen this whoops finder dust top class no pdf okay so we need to actually edit this form we're going to come over here in the right hand side we're going to click tools okay because right now we can't do anything because I fill out the form so we need to make the form available for editing so we're going to click tools and we're going to come down here and say a forms at it kate tools forms edit now we can see all of our boxes the form looks crazy but that's okay so we see this is the combo box if we double click it there we are we get the properties for that combo box and what we want to do is go under options and click allow user to enter custom text so even though in in design we called this a combo box we still have to do this work in acrobat toe actually finish making it a combo box okay, so this is going to allow now these three items or users can allow put in their own custom text. So how did we get here again? We went tio let's get out completely. We clicked tools rate, then we click forms at it. Then we double click this box, allow user to enter custom text. All right, so that's nice. Um we'll move on so we can close this. Okay, let's, go here to r and maybe like, look at this, I drew the box kind of high for the line, but is here so I can actually just move it, just move that down. Um okay, so these are the list boxes, so we don't have to actually do anything for these because we didn't want the user to be able to type their own thing in here, so we're just going to leave that alone. Um and it's ready to got what's ready for the users here's our check boxes, we don't have to do anything here. They're ready to go. This text field is just a regular text field so literal just fill in the blank. No drop downs or anything like that, and these radio buttons should be ready to go to, so once we're happy with our editing, then we could click close form for editing um and then we're we'd be ready to go. So if we want to fill this out now, we can come down here and say punkin or we could type something else and I need a little bit of a bigger box here. Um, we could type pukey whoa! All right, let's, talk about our let's talk about our appearance when we go in here and edit these forms that will go back to tools forms at it, we can determine all kinds of things about the appearance of this so we can go in and tell it the font to use the size. What is this crazy fun that it's using? Okay, um, usually it's going to go to something like, I don't know ariel or helvetica or something like that, which is a little bit less crazy, but the user, of course, has to have that font on their system in order for it to work. So even if you get a little, you know compulsive about styling all of this because you wanted to have your certain fun and you wanted to look a certain way, the user would have to have the fun in orderto work with it, so you are going to be kind of limited, but you could change the colors or something like that if you wanted to do that, um but yeah maybe we'll make this a little bit smaller and let's see what else we want to dio the position is probably fine all right the calculate field here this is where if you were doing any like matthew kind of stuff you would work with the calculate field so anyway all right so that looks good so we'll close it for editing on dh then these ones are just uh from this list so they can scroll down here and say ok, well maybe they go together like chips and salsa or maybe chips and soft music right um and then the check boxes they would just click and you can check them by just clicking again really simple on dh then this box right here was just straight up fill in the blank so you could say I groups I heart you and then these buttons down here these are radio buttons so want to sit together at lunch duh and then like maybe you get another love note from someone else that you like better and then you're like maybe I got I got to see right so these options you can see are mutually exclusive so that's the simple simple look at forms now if you wanted to make sure that the user could um print this with all of this data in it then you have to do one more step we want to come up to file I'll save as other and then we would want to say reader extended pdf and then um enable adding text in pdf so wait a minute reader extended pdf oh enable more tools to include form fill in because otherwise it could be that they will save it ok save save replace yes. Okay, because otherwise it could be that they fill out your whole form and then they save it to try to come back. And philip finish it later and they would lose that data if you don't enable that data to be saved. So you want to make sure if you want your your user to be able to fill this out, save it, print it whatever with their information you want to enable that extended business? Um and there you have it so nice, simple little fun form. I always thought this would be fun like the kids should get on this. Like when I was in high school, the, uh what is that? The sales club. They sold cookies in the hallways between lunch and I think you could sell love notes, pdf style and then people who do I wouldn't be able to write them themselves they could just fill it out and send it so you'd be doing a whole service and just making everyone happy, I think it's great