Adding Interactive Animations to Page 2: Object States and Buttons Tutorial

In this video, we're going to be editing our second page and adding some animations. So let's zoom in here so we get a good view of our second page, and the changes we're going to want to make are to this image right here.

For our digital file, we want this to be a little more interactive so that users can see different images from Domus Interior Design. To do this, we want to change the Object State of this image right here on this page. So let's again change our workspace from VDCI, and we'll go down to Digital Publishing.

With this new workspace, we're going to go into Object States. Object States are essentially different displays of objects being shown on a page at different times. We're going to go to Object States, and we're going to click the plus on the bottom to convert it from an image to an Object State.

Here, we now see State 1 and State 2. Although they don't currently look different, this is because the same image is in State 1 and State 2. So let's go back to Domus Interior Design. To change this, we can actually do this by hitting A on the keyboard for the Direct Selection Tool, and let's select the image within the Image Frame. Next, let's delete it.

From here, we can now add a new image within this Image Frame for State 2. So let's go to our CC Libraries again, and scrolling down, feel free to pick whatever image you'd prefer. In this case, I'll choose this image here, and I'll click on our Image Frame. I actually like the way this is positioned.

I may move it slightly to the right, hold in Shift, and I like how this looks. If we now click on this image, hitting V on the keyboard, clicking outside and selecting our image, we can see that this is in State 2. If we click State 1, we'll see the first image that we originally had. Now we're starting to get a preview of what our viewer will see when they interact with this file.

However, if we go into EPUB Interactivity Preview, we'll hit Play, and see Page 2. There's currently no way to scan between the two different Object States. This is where Buttons come in. Let's close this, and let's jump up to Buttons and Forms.

In this case, we want to add a Button on the right-hand side to trigger the file to change from one image or one Object State to the second image or Object State. Therefore, let's add our Button. We can do this by going to the top right-hand side where we see the three lines, and we're going to go to Sample Buttons and Forms.

Here, we'll see that we have our Sample Buttons and Forms Panel come up, and let's simply drag this in right under Buttons and Forms. If we click on this, we can see that we have a variety of samples. We have check marks, we have arrows, and in this case, feel free to choose whatever arrow you'd prefer.

Let's have an arrow that points to the right so we can put it on the right-hand side and switch Object States. Personally, I'll choose 146. Simply click and drag it on.

Additionally, I want to change the size by holding Shift and dragging out from the corner, and here we have our arrow on the right-hand side. I'll line it up with the edge of this image and

On the center, and holding Shift, I'm going to hit the left arrow key to move it over just a little bit from the right-hand side. We can then close our Sample Buttons, and we now have our two Object States and one Button.

However, this Button itself is simply an image and needs to be assigned the task of a Button. To do this, we're going to go back to Buttons and Forms, and with it selected, we'll select the Type “Button” and the Name. For this Name, we'll triple-click and type “Right Button.” Next, we're going to go to Event, and the Event is essentially when it should happen.

In this case, we want it to be On Click, meaning that when we click the Button, whatever action we assign will happen. Now we need to add an Action. We'll click on the plus sign to the right of Actions, and from here, we have a whole variety of different actions that we can assign to Buttons.

In this case, since we're working with states, we can select Go to Next State. With it selected, let's click outside and let's go to EPUB Interactivity. We'll hit the Play button, and we'll see that we have a new reloaded version, and we can now interact with this preview by clicking the Button. And here we can see that we've now successfully created a Button to preview through different images.

Next, let's add a little bit of animation to this right-hand side. For this, we're going to select the text, and let's go to the Animation Panel. For this animation, let's choose whatever preset you'd prefer. I'm going to have mine Fly Out, and we'll have it Fly Out from the right-hand side.

See what this looks like, and we'll preview it and hit Play. In this case, it looks like I've accidentally assigned an animation that's a transition out rather than in, which brings up an important point: as we're assigning animations, it's important to not only check the preview, but understand how the animation affects the user experience. While some of these can be helpful for displaying new content, some of them can also be interactive for displaying content that you only want individuals to see for a certain amount of time.

So let's now change the transition, and feel free to pick whatever you'd prefer. I'm simply going to do a Fly In from the Top, and here we'll have the animation drop in place for our text. We'll see a preview of this and hit Play, and this looks nice.

The user will see the text drop below, and then we'll have an opportunity to thumb through the different images. I think this looks good, so let's now save our work by hitting CTRL+S on the keyboard to save. In the next video, we'll be working on these Object States a little bit more as well as working on our Buttons.

See you there!