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lfritts20
lfritts20
Participant
March 5, 2019
Question

Interactive Buttons Not Working In EPUB

  • March 5, 2019
  • 1 reply
  • 3080 views

First off, thank you thank you to anyone and everyone who is able to help me with this. I am at my wits end, I have googled and googled and just cannot seem to to track down what it preventing my interactive buttons in InDesign to work in the EPUB file that I export.

I am working out of InDesign CC2018 on a Windows 10, and have an InDesign Book file file with individual sections/files --- I have put the TOC/Introduction file out into a WeTransfer link that is valid for 7 days if anyone wants to see the actual file:  https://we.tl/t-bxqYFkY7Jg . Sprinkled through my files are .jpg images that I have converted over to buttons, so that when clicked a web browser window will pop up and take you to a website or youtube video. These screen shots below apply to the one button that is in the TOC/Introduction file/section that has one of these buttons in it, but this problem does affect ALL of my buttons throughout the whole book.

In this file, in the Button Panel, I have assigned it to be a "Go to URL", to trigger on "on Release or Tap", and an appearance of "Normal"

I have tested all of these buttons using both the EPUB Interactivity Preview panel and the SWF Preview Panel (although admittedly I do not really know that the SWF is, but did read the make sure that preview was working on any forurm...and it is!)

I am exporting this document (and when I export the whole Book) to an EPUB Fixed Layout. My machine opens that file in Microsoft Edge, that is the only software I have on my machine that will read the file. Everything looks great, the layout is great, the Table of Contents is great, I hover my cursor over the image and give the little white hand showing that I can click on it and.....NOTHING! I click and nothing happens. I ctrl+click and nothing happens. It's like the button is there, the interactivity is there, but not not pop up in a new tab and go to that URL. A colleague of mine has opened the EPUB file in an ereader called Calibre, and she experiences that same problem there where the buttons do not work.

On a side note, I can export this file (or the whole Book) into an Interactive PDF and the buttons work like a charm with no issues at all.

Please, if anyone can explain this and help me get these buttons to work in the EPUB file I will be eternally grateful!

Thank you!

Lovisa

This topic has been closed for replies.

1 reply

rayek.elfin
rayek.elfin
Legend
March 6, 2019

The epub reader situation and reading fixed layout epubs on Windows is unfortunately still not solved. Simply stated, a dependable and good epub reader which is compatible with highly interactive fixed layout epubs on Windows doesn't exist (yet?). The same for Android and Linux.

On a Mac and the iOS platforms the iBook reader works fine.

Calibre, Edge, etc. just don't have the support needed for highly interactive FXL epubs on Windows.

That said, to fix the external link button so that it does work in Edge may possible. It means opening the epub files (an epub is a zipped archive), and removing the javascript code, and replace it with a regular simple html anchor link. This requires some basic html coding knowledge.

Steve Werner
Community Expert
Steve WernerCommunity Expert
Community Expert
March 6, 2019

You posted this three times. Please only post once. I've locked the other two posts.

lfritts20
lfritts20Author
Participant
March 7, 2019

Sorry about that, I was having difficulties getting the post to go through. It kept popping up with a message that it was not posted, and it took me three times over trying to it to direct me to the finished post. The others must have gone through.

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