Creating a button using text to trigger pop up

[DigitalChickster]

Hi all! I've never used the Button & Forms palette before in InDesign. I'm using InDesign 15.0.2 on my iMac. I'm trying to create a pop-up list the shows up when someone hovers over some specific text. I understand how to create the pop-up part. What I don't understand is how to make the text what you hover over. The Button & Forms palette doesn't give me any options when I select the text. So... do I just create an invisable box around the specific text  and make that what I use to trigger the pop up? Or is there a better way? Thanks!

Julie

[John Mensinger]

Set the text in its own frame, then convert the frame to a button.

If it's just several words within a sentence within a paragraph, you can still set them in their own frame, then anchor it inline with the text flow where those words should appear.

[DigitalChickster]

Thanks! I was hoping I could actually use the text... so that I could have it change color when someone was hovering over it. Sounds like I CAN do that... but it's a lot or trouble! LOL

[BobLevine]

It's an insane amount of work for no return at all and it won't work on mobile devices at all. Desktops are nothing but a crapshoot, too.

My advice: don't waste your time.

[DigitalChickster]

I agree, Bob! But I'm not doing it to be posted online. I do PDF reports for a client who then emails the reports to his clients directly. He has asked for some pop-ups that have lists and definitions. I just haven't done it before. 

[John Mensinger]

Okay, if you are to persist in this pursuit, perhaps I can offer some small jump-starters.

This is a simple example of (my understanding of) what you described:

http://www.getinfotech.net/hover-popup.pdf

Certain aspects of that might work, or not, in various browser plugins and/or mobile PDF readers, but in the desktop version of Adobe Reader (and Acrobat, of course), it should all work fine. If it works for you, and you have Acrobat (if you're trying to produce reliable interactive PDF's for closed-loop use, you need it), you can reverse-engineer it to adapt for your purposes.

The InDesign file: http://www.getinfotech.net/hover-popup.indd contains the hover text, and the entire popup, as buttons. The hover-text button's color change is an InDesign state-change. You could attempt to implement the rollover-popup using show/hide features in InDesign, but it's much, much more reliable to do so in Acrobat with Javascript. To see how that works, open the PDF in Acrobat and enter form edit mode. Bring up the properties of the hoverText field and look at the Actions tab. You'll see that the hover effect is there using Mouse Enter and Mouse Exit to run a very simple, single line of Javascript that shows and hides the popUpFrame field. You can copy/paste that and substitute your own field name(s) any number of times.

[DigitalChickster]

Thank you so much! As much as I would like NOT to persist in this pursuit, I've got to do what my client wants me to do. So... thank you again for taking the time to explain it in such detail. And yes... your example is exactly what I want to do.