Rollover an area to make an image appear

You can use buttons for this. The buttons holding the images should be set to Icon Only and you can choose an image to use as its button face (icon). In the buttons that you use to control these image buttons, set them up to be invisible (no border color, no background color, no label) and use a Show/Hide action for the Mouse Enter event that shows one or more image button fields, and a similar Show/Hide action for the Mouse Exit event that hides the same image button fields.

Thanks, I'd actually been experimenting with the buttons already, but even with this guidance I still can't get it to work. To clarify the way i have it set up now, the properties are set as follows …

• General: Form field 'hidden' and read only 'checked'

• Appearance: No border, no fill

• Options: Icon only, behaviour = push, state = rollover, icon added as a pdf file

• Actions:
Mouse enter set to 'show/hide field', with 'show' selected in options
Mouse Exit set to 'show/hide field', with 'hide' selected in options

Been trying all day to find a button or other method that works, any help much appreciated!!

The idea is that you have at least two buttons:

Button 1 is the invisible button, but not read-only, that you place somewhere to act as the "hot spot". When the mouse enters the hot spot, the image in button 2 will be displayed.

Button 2 should be set up to be read-only and initially hidden. The show/hide actions in button 1 control the visibility of button 2.

If this is what you want and you are still having trouble getting it to work, I can post a simple demo.

Working at last! Simple when you know how, should just make deadline. Many thanks.

Found this method afterwards by chance in Ted Padovas 101 Acrobat tips which was very simple for what I needed if anyone else needs it! Just think of your 'pop up' image as the button face

ADDING BUTTONS (BUTTON FACES)

A button face is an icon or an image appearing within a Button field. You can use button faces for importing images or using icons
for buttons that invoke actions such as resetting a form, submitting a form, navigating pages, playing and stopping video clips, and a number of other action items you want to assign to a button. To add a button face to a Button field, do the following:
• Create a button field.
• Open the Button Field Properties dialog box.
• Click the Options tab.
• Choose Icon only from the Layout drop down menu.
• Click Choose icon.
• Click Browse in the Select Icon dialog box.
• Navigate folders on your hard drive to locate a file to import as a button face.
Note that from the Files of type (Windows) or Show (Macintosh) drop down menu you can choose from a number of different file formats to import for your button face.
• Select the file to import and click Select.
• Click OK in the Select Icon dialog box.

Tip: When adding buttons, choose from the options in the Behaviour drop down menu. If you choose None, you can eliminate the focus rectangle when the button is clicked.


ADDING ROLLOVERS

To format text fields as number containers do the following:
• Follow steps in ADDING BUTTONS (BUTTON FACES) to create a button face.
• Choose Push for the Behaviour
• Click Rollover in the State list.
• Follow the same steps for importing a button face.

Creating buttons with transparency is quite simple. For vector objects use Adobe Illustrator. For images, add an image to a transparent layer and save the file as a PDF. All transparency is preserved with both Illustrator and Photoshop layered files.

Can I use this method to create a pop up showing text? Here is what I'm trying to solve: I have a bar graph (a series of discreet charts, all done in Illustrator, assembled into one large document. I was asked to create a rollover on the bars of one of these graphs showing more information on how the values were obtained. I'm trying to avoid publishing this page as html since the pdf format has worked nicely in the past. Thank you

Actually, I'd like to follow up w more information on what I'm trying to do. Each bar (on one particular graph) represents several locations and percentages. So I need to add more than just a tooltip, I need to add about 23 locations w percentages for each bar on the graph. I thought to do an invisible button (roll on/roll off) but it seems limited to just 1 tool tip. Thanks again.

Yes, you can do this to display text. When you set up a button icon, the source can be a page from another PDF. So you just need to create a PDF that contains the text you want to display and use it as the icon source for the button that gets shown/hidden in the mouse enter/exit events of the button that you'd place over a bar.

Embedding PDF files in another PDF document.


Is it possible to embed and hide PDF files in another PDF document and show these files when user clicks a button. For example, in a ten page document I want to embed another four or five pages but they will be hidden in the normal mode. If the user clicks a button to see the relevant page that page is shown either replacing the normal page or sliding down the contents( as in RoboHelp dropdown Hotspot and Text).

I tried to do this through Javascript toggle ( hide and show layers) feature and also tried the button-icon-image method suggested above. But none of them are satisfactory. Though the button-icon-image method worked well, the images again have to travel separately in a folder along with the PDF document. I would be grateful if someone could help me find a solution to this.

Thanks

Vijjy

Look into the Template object, but be aware that it is limited when used in Reader.
By the way, your last comment is not correct. If you embed images in a button the image files are not required. Their content gets embedded in the PDF.

If you have distinctive places for where to show the additional pages, you simply create those button fields and set the icons from your documents. With field show/hide logic you can display those pages. The pages become part of the buttons, and therefore part of the document; no need to have them separate (as it has been said above).

If you want to create one field for showing additional pages, you can do that as well: You can create a hidden template page, and fill it with button fields into which you place the pages you want to show.

When you need a page, you will use a buttonSetIcon()/buttonGetIcon() combination to load the page into the "display field".

This DOES work in Reader without extended rights. So, no worries about that.

Hope this can help.

Max Wyss.