Learn how to create an interactive slide presentation in Adobe InDesign

In this tutorial, learn how to create interactive slide presentations for mobile platform, using Adobe InDesign. While the focus for this lesson is creating the layout for mobile, the techniques used will carry over to any intended platform.

The topics that will be covered in this lesson include setting up button structures as well as applying animation to the illustrations on each page in the document. I'll also go over publishing online and show you the how the slides look on mobile platform.

So, let's get started!

The first step, once you have your design in order, is setting up the navigation structure – essentially taking viewers through the presentation seamlessly using the left and right arrow buttons. To do this, we'll set up button interactions to the arrow icons placed on the pages.

Setting Up Buttons

1. On Page 1, click the Right Arrow icon and in the Buttons and Forms panel, convert the object into a button.

2. Rename the button Forward 1.

3. Click the Plus icon to add an Action and choose Go to Page under the EPub Only header. (Tip: You can also use the Next Page or Previous Page options if the document is meant for PDF Interactive).

4. Select your Zoom option. In this lesson it's OK to leave it on Inherit Zoom.

5. Type the page destination. Because this is the first forward button on Page 1, we'll type the destination to go to Page 2.

6. You will repeat the same steps for the remaining forward buttons in the document, setting respective page destinations for each. Once the forward buttons are done, you can repeat the same steps for the previous buttons throughout.

Great! Now that you've set up all the button structures, it's time to add animation to each illustration in this layout. The goal is to have the animations load when the transitioning to the next page. In this lesson, I set up the animations to fly in from left and fly in from right – alternating with each page flip.

Adding Animation

1. Open the Animation panel, which can be found by going to Window > Animation.

2. Click on the artwork on Page 1 and in the Animation panel, select the preset of Fly in from Right.

3. Set the Duration to play at 1 second.

4. In the Opacity dropdown choose None for a nice hard transition when flipping through the presentation. Having a Fade In effect is fine, but I found for something like the project, having the Animation play in on a hard transition is better.

5. To have the animation play from a longer distance, click on the green motion path indicator once with the Selection Tool and drag out the end point of the path off the page.

6. Go through all the illustrations in the document and repeat the same steps – altering the preset from Fly in from Right and Fly in from Left as well as setting the motion path indicator distances respectively.

In this lesson we'll also go over how to publish the work online and I'll show you how it'll look in a mobile web browser. Remember, this is an HTML5 interactive design and is not an alternative to a mobile application.

However, it can also be exported as an ePub (Fixed Layout) document and opened in your favourite E-Reader, such as Apple Books or Adobe Digital Editions.