Controlling the Way Text Flows

After you’ve converted your eBook to tagged PDF, you may discover that the page elements don’t flow properly, especially when the page is viewed on a smaller screen. For example, a text caption for a graphic might appear above the image rather than below it. In other cases, you might have an image that has a text wrap around it, but you want to have the image appear after the text when it is reflowed. In such cases, you can use the TouchUp Order tool in Acrobat 6 to edit the reflow order of tagged items in the document. The TouchUp Order tool is located on the TouchUp Text Tool pop-up menu. You can select the tool by either choosing it from this pop-up menu or by holding down the Shift key and tapping the T key to cycle through the TouchUp tools until the TouchUp Order tool appears.
To change the reflow order of elements on a tagged PDF page, follow these steps:

1. Open the eBook file and navigate to the page containing the elements for which you want to change the reflow order.
2. Choose View➪Navigation Tabs➪Content to open the Content Navigation pane. The Content Navigation pane displays the content structure tree of your eBook document. When you click the Expand button (+) attached to your eBook icon, the pages of your eBook appear on the next level with Expand buttons of their own. Clicking these buttons displays containers that hold the separate elements on the page in the order that they appear in your eBook document. You can then drag the page elements either individually or their whole container to new positions in the structure tree to reorder the page elements.
3. Drag the desired page element or container to a new position in the page structure tree. As you drag a page element or container, the mouse pointer changes between an International No symbol and a red downward arrow, indicating the positions you can or cannot drop the desired page element when you release the mouse button. A red underscore mouse pointer is displayed to indicate you are moving an element to an upper-level position.
4. Repeat Step 3 until you’re satisfied with the reordering of the eBook page elements, and then click the Close button to close the Content Navigation pane.
5. To view your reflow order changes first, choose View➪Reflow or press Ctrl+4 (Ô+4 on Mac). Use the Zoom In and Zoom Out buttons to observe how the elements reflow under different page magnifications.

Using Link Properties options

The Link Properties toolbar, like all Properties toolbars in Acrobat 6, pops up when you select an editing tool. This toolbar lets you specify the appearance of a link and what action occurs when you click the link. As you can see each button on the Link Properties toolbar has a pop-up menu button (black triangle) attached for selecting the following options:

• Color: Click the Color button to choose a color for the link border on the palette that appears.
• Line Style: Click the Line Style pop-up menu to select No Line, Solid, Dashed, or Underline border style.
• Line Thickness: Click the Line Thickness pop-up menu (marked by either 1pt, 2pt, or 3pt line sizes in the Link Properties toolbar) and choose a Thin, Medium, or Thick outline border for the link.
• Highlight Style: The Highlight Style pop-up menu lets you specify a momentary change in appearance for a link when the user clicks it. The effect is displayed until the user releases the mouse button. These options are available for both visible and invisible links. Choose None to have no change in appearance, Invert to invert the colors of the link, Outline to highlight the border on a visible link or to display a thin line around an invisible link, or Inset to create a 3-D button effect.
• More: Opens the Link Properties dialog box with the Actions tab selected. Choose from the 16 options in the Add an Action drop-down list, which define an action that occurs when the user clicks a link. The Go to Page in the Document option is the default and is used for internal links. The other choices on this list are used to perform a variety of actions when a link is activated, such as opening a file, playing a sound or movie, or running a JavaScript. he majority of the actions are either impractical or not appropriate for eBook use

Adding an internal link

You create all links with the Link tool, which is found on the Advanced Editing toolbar. To select the tool, click its button on the toolbar or press L.
To add an internal link to your eBook, follow these steps:

1. Open the eBook file and navigate to the page in which you want to add a link.
2. Select the Link tool and use its cross-hair pointer to draw a rectangle in the area of the page you want users to click to activate the link, and then release the mouse button. The Create Link dialog box opens, as shown in Figure. When you select the Link tool, any links currently in the document temporarily appear even if they are hidden. The Link Properties toolbar also opens, as shown in Figure. See the next section for details on the options provided in this toolbar.
3. In the Link Actions area of the Create Link dialog box, select the Open a Page in This Document radio button, enter the page number for your link’s destination page in the Page text box, and select a Zoom setting from the Zoom drop-down list. The zoom settings determine how the destination page is displayed in the PDF reader after clicking a link and are the same as those provided in Acrobat 6 — Fit Page, Actual Size, Fit Width, Fit Visible, and Inherit Zoom, which uses the same view setting for the destination page as the page containing the link.
4. Select the Open a File radio button to have the link open an external file. Click the Browse button to locate and select the file. If the file is not a PDF document, those who click this link must have the associated program installed on their computers to view the file.
5. Select the Open a Web Page radio button and type a URL address in the Address text box. See the “Adding an external link” section, later in this chapter, for more on this option.
6. Select the Custom link radio button to create a link with JavaScript actions attached to it, such as playing a sound file or movie clip. These actions are specified in the Link Properties dialog box. See the next section for more about the Link Properties dialog box.
7. Click OK to close the Create Link dialog box and test your new link.

You can also use the Hand tool to test the link. Note that when you hover the Hand tool pointer over a link, it changes to a pointing finger.

Managing PDF Links

Hyperlinks add interactivity to an eBook by providing a means of navigating to desired information quickly and easily. Using links, an eBook reader can jump to a different place in the current page, call up other pages in the eBook, and even retrieve other documents on a network or download pages from the World Wide Web. When you create a link in Acrobat 6, you define an area in the document for the link, choose whether it appears visible or invisible to the user, and specify what occurs when the user clicks the link. Acrobat 6 lets you create internal links that navigate to destinations in the current document —a table of contents link, for example — as well as external links that retrieve other documents on a network or Web pages from the Internet. One of the main goals in using an eBook authoring program that can export its documents to PDF is that the majority of links you might need in your eBook can be set up in the authoring program and automatically converted to PDF during the export process. There are times, however, when you’ll want to edit those export-generated links or add new links to your eBook. The following sections take you through the process.