Glitchy Interactive Pdf Display In Adobe Acrobat (Please Help?)

[Megan Stable]

I created an interactive pdf using the hover and roll off features on certain objects/shapes. Once the mouse rolls over a shape it changes colour as programmed, but upon roll off where the original colour shoud come back, only part of it does. This can happen for up to five objects remaining with their hover colours on for seconds after the mouse has rolled off. They should all have their original unactivated colours as soon as the mouse rolls off and not seconds after.  Is any one able to assist (I'd be so grateful)?

[BobLevine]

That "feature" has been wonky forever. This is not an InDesign issue, it's an Acrobat issue and FWIW, I would never use something like unless you know for sure the content will be viewed only on desktop machines. There is no way to make it work on mobile.

You might want to re-think the whole thing.

[Megan Stable]

Thank you for your input.

[JR Boulay]

Can you share the PDF file, or send it to me privatly?

[Megan Stable]

Thanks I will send it to you privately. 

[Derek Cross]

Now that Flash is obsolete some features in Interactive PDFs have changed – you can have a word or words or an image (such as a button shape) as a document hyperlink to say another page in the document, or to an external website. Some devices, for example, iPads, don't have rollover capability – only click – you should avoid multi-action buttons like On Click, On Roll Over, etc. Multi-state objects (MSO) don’t work at all in Interactive PDFs.

[JR Boulay]

"Now that Flash is obsolete some features in Interactive PDFs have changed"

To be more precise, I would say that before 2021, Acrobat made it possible to use either the interactive functions of the PDF 1.7 format (aka ISO 32000 Standard) or the interactive functions of the SWF format, via the support of the Flash Player plugin (as for browsers ).

Now the difference is that Acrobat only supports the interactive functions of PDF 1.7 format.

The problem is that InDesign has always favored the support of the SWF format (which made sense at the time) but it never really handled the interactive functions of the PDF format well.

While waiting for InDesign to evolve, to create a "real" interactive PDF using all the features of the PDF format, it is best to use Acrobat Pro.

[Megan Stable]

Thank you for your input. I will try and open the pdf with Acrobat Pro and see how that goes.

[Derek Cross]

The point is Megan , that unless you can control which PDF Readers your users will use (unlikely), your Interactive PDF is bound to fail unless the interactivity consists of just simple hyperlinks, as I described earlier.

[JR Boulay]

"Thanks I will send it to you privately. "

As can be seen from the attached capture made in Acrobat Pro, InDesign has curiously split each petal into two interactive areas/form fields, one for the image and one for the text.
(See what I said above about InDesign lacks).

But the form fields are both reactive to the passage of the cursor which explains this strange behavior.

To resolve the problem, all you have to do is using Acrobat Pro to deactivate the form fields containing text, leaving only the field containing the image active.

You should know that in a PDF a form field is necessarily rectangular, which explains some inevitable overlaps between some petals.

I sent you the corrected document by private message.

[JR Boulay]

"unless you can control which PDF Readers your users will use (unlikely), your Interactive PDF is bound to fail unless the interactivity consists of just simple hyperlinks, as I described earlier."

You can control which PDF Readers your users will use!

All PDF form makers should know this great tip (copy-paste this URL in Google Translate) :

https://www.abracadabrapdf.net/ressources-et-tutos/js-et-formulaires-ressources/forcer-utilisation-p...

[Megan Stable]

Thanks I will look into this!