Creating a "tabbed manual" in Designer or Publisher

[Paul Martin]

I would like to recreate the contents of a traditional folder to house a manual. (In fact, a "house manual" that might accompany a letting.)

I'm attracted to the idea of "dividers" with a vertical tab arrangment which would make it easy to access the relevant section. Each "tab" would have space for references such as months of the year, letter of the alphabet or any other useful subdivisions. Pretty much as you can still buy in a stationers.

At this stage, I am imagining it as being printable as that might best suit recipients, but I'd like it to look appealing in electronic format, too. (Older readers may remember filofax and its software form.)

I'm not expecting this to be particularly complex, but if you have any ideas for making it easy-to-use or just fun, I would be grateful.

[R C-R]

2 hours ago, Paul Martin said:

I'm attracted to the idea of "dividers" with a vertical tab arrangment which would make it easy to access the relevant section.

If I understand you correctly, you want the electronic version to be interactive so if you click on a tab the view opens the document to that section. Is that right?

[Paul Martin]

My thinking hadn't got that far, but the answer must be Yes! So far, I have only used Publisher to produce "magazine format" newsletter in PDF format, but I'd like the on-screen version to be easily navigable.

[R C-R]

3 hours ago, Paul Martin said:

My thinking hadn't got that far, but the answer must be Yes! So far, I have only used Publisher to produce "magazine format" newsletter in PDF format, but I'd like the on-screen version to be easily navigable.

I don't know of any way to make this interactive but there might be using hyperlinks & a PDF export. Hopefully, someone else more familiar with that can tell you if or how you could do it.

[walt.farrell]

I might suggest playing around with making a TOC, and in that TOC including a "tab" paragraph text style that you've created. Then, in the TOC options, specify to include the entries as PDF Bookmarks.

Then export as PDF, with "include bookmarks" chosen in the More part of the Export options. Then you can let the PDF reader handle the user's clicks and do the navigation. Note that some readers may not display bookmarks, though.

[v_kyr]

2 hours ago, Paul Martin said:

So far, I have only used Publisher to produce "magazine format" newsletter in PDF format, but I'd like the on-screen version to be easily navigable.

Hmm, in order of a PDF file you can use buttons, bookmarks and hyperlinks for the navigation. - Though I don't know if Publisher supports the creation of buttons for PDF, Adobe Acrobat in contrast does of course. Here are some related example links: 

• How to Create Navigation Buttons in PDFs with Adobe Acrobat
• About buttons
• Three Ways to Create Bookmarks in PDFs with Adobe Acrobat
• Affinity Publisher - PDF Bookmarks
• Affinity Publisher - Hyperlinks

In order to let the whole then look visually more like filofax tabs etc., the tabs could be in the artwork itself with an invisible button on top of each.  You would then create actions for the tabs/buttons that would set the different layer's visibility (there is a "Set layer visibility" action in Acrobat one can trigger by setable mouse events etc.), depending on what tab was clicked. - In case of no Publisher button creation options, fake those via bookmarks, it is certainly possible, in that you'd basically create an "underlay" that would be placed under/around the existing content. Each "tab" (just a graphical element) would have a Link as part of it that would link to each part of the PDF.

Another no PDF way at all is of course, to do the whole instead via HTML/CSS/JS and then corresponding PNG/JPG or SVG graphics for the tabs. Pretty much the way many websites with an underlayed CMS (Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla etc.) do that. But just for simpler custom things you won't need a dynamic CMS & DB here at all.

[walt.farrell]

1 minute ago, v_kyr said:

In order to let the whole then look visually more like filofax tabs etc., the tabs could be in the artwork itself with an invisible button on top of each.  You would then create actions for the tabs/buttons that would set the different layer's visibility (there is a "Set layer visibility" action in Acrobat one can trigger by setable mouse events etc.), depending on what tab was clicked. - In case of no Publisher button creation options,

Publisher does not have any functions like that.

[v_kyr]

Just now, walt.farrell said:

Publisher does not have any functions like that.

Then he has to fake it via bookmarks/hyperlinks!

[walt.farrell]

26 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

Then he has to fake it via bookmarks/hyperlinks!

That's why I suggested bookmarks

[v_kyr]

3 minutes ago, walt.farrell said:

That's why I suggested bookmarks

I've already wrote that in my first posting above ...

33 minutes ago, v_kyr said:

...- In case of no Publisher button creation options, fake those via bookmarks, it is certainly possible, in that you'd basically create an "underlay" that would be placed under/around the existing content. Each "tab" (just a graphical element) would have a Link as part of it that would link to each part of the PDF.

 

[Paul Martin]

Thank you all for gfiving this so much attention! Some of the suggestions are probably beyond me to execute, but they have - as I hoped - all added to the interest of the project and, perhaps, the gaiety of nations.