Operation Manual

Working with Hyperlinks and Interactivity 65
To aid navigation, you can vary the bar’s appearance from section to
section, with the button for the current section appearing emphasized or
highlighted in some way. Perhaps the most economical solution
combines a basic set of buttons on the master page with a bullet or
pointer graphic on the page level to denote the current section. This
approach works especially well with a vertical list, e.g. section names:
Placing a pointer-type graphic on each page entails a lot of pasting, but
it’s worth the effort. Make sure pointer alignment is consistent from
page to page.
To achieve a highlighting effect, you can use a paint program like Serif
PhotoPlus to customize the navigation bar graphic for the various
sections of the site.
 Begin with a graphic that includes a full set of neutral
(unhighlighted) buttons.
 Make as many copies of the graphic as there are buttons.
 Modify one button in each copy, applying a highlighting effect
such as a different color or font style. Keep the rest of the graphic
the same.
This gives you a unique button graphic for each section.
 Paste each graphic onto all pages of the appropriate section, in the
same position. (Work at high magnification and use the ChangeBar
to view the selected object’s pixel position. Better yet, place a
couple of ruler guides and turn Snapping on.)
The effect will be that of a single navigation bar with highlighting that
changes from section to section. By the way, an advantage of using the
page level (rather than the master page) for your button bar is that you
can include a duplicate bar at the foot of each page as an added
convenience to the user. Since your pages are likely to vary in length
(that is, distance to the bottom object), you can vary the placement of
the bottom bar as needed. If it were on the master page, its position
would have to remain static.