techniques to indicate hyperlinks in frame

[Stuart Rogers]

Kevin Hunter wrote:

> 
> I'm looking for a simple but effective technique of visually
> indicating, in the PDF version of the guide, that certain text
> strings are hyperlinks. Ideally, this technique would be invisible in
> the print version, where the links obviously wouldn't work.
> 
> I don't want to include full URLs in the text flow because they can
> be long and ugly, and functionally useless: ie, no one is going to
> type in a 200 character URL (which may be the actual address address
> of a page, with all it's parameters, to subscribe to a web event)
> when the same URL can be gotten to by clicking a link directly from
> our home page. So in the text, I want to tell them how to find the
> link, and in the PDF version of the guide, I want part of those
> instructions to also BE a hyperlink.
> 
> I've thought of using a simple icon to include within my text flow,
> which I'd hyperlink. This icon would be visible in both the printed
> and PDF versions of the guide, as I'm not sure it'd be worth the
> hassle to condition it out of the PDF I send to the printers. This
> isn't necessarily a totally undesirable solution, but I was just
> wondering if anyone had something more elegant, or knew of a standard
> for this type of thing.
> 
> Thanks in advance for any suggestions.

One approach:

Type the text that you want to be the visible link. It does not have to 
be the URL itself.

Insert somewhere within that text a hypertext marker that contains the 
ugly, lengthy URL (but is invisible in both print and online versions).

Select the link text and apply a character format. In your print 
template, that format would be defined with all parameters As-Is. In 
your online template, it would be defined with some distinct 
parameter(s) such as blue underlined.

Frame will make all the text tagged with that char format an active 
hyperlink. In print it won't look any different from body content. In 
PDF it will be a visibly clickable link.

Caveat: if your link text forms an entire pgf by itself, make sure to 
put a space at the end of it and *don't* apply the char tag to the 
space. If you apply a char tag to an entire pgf, FM treats it as an 
override to the default pgf font. Overrides = bad.

Tip: TinyURL.com will convert URLs of any length to a short string such 
as http://tinyurl.com/q3phn (instead of 
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsvista/getready/editions/home_basic.mspx).
If you use Firefox as your browser, add the TinyURL Creator extension, 
and you can right-click on a Web page to have a TinyURL created and 
copied to your clipboard.


-- 
Stuart Rogers
Technical Communicator
Phoenix Geophysics Limited
Toronto, ON, Canada
+1 (416) 491-7340 x 325

srogers phoenix-geophysics com

"Developers explain How the Product Works.
Technical writers explain How to Work the Product."


Get Firefox!
http://tinyurl.com/8q9c5