Add Scrolling Images or Text to a Tablet App

Jennifer Wills

Sometimes you want to show more content than will fit on one fixed screen of a tablet publication. I was faced with this situation when highlighting the work of a prolific newspaper designer for a sampler edition of InDesign Magazine. In that case, I wanted to show many visual examples. A similar problem is when you want to fit lots of text into one fixed frame that seems too small for the text.
There are several design solutions, but one way is to use the Pan and Zoom feature of Adobe’s Digital Publishing Suite to create a scrollable frame holding anything you wish. The short video below demonstrates the end result:

1. Create the image in Photoshop.
In Photoshop, create an image that is at least twice as wide as it is tall. In our case, we had several examples to show in the scrolling frame, so the width of the image was several times the height.

Save the image as a high-quality JPG file.
2. Draw out the frame in InDesign.
In InDesign, click on the Rectangle Frame tool and drag out a frame to hold the image that will pan in your digital publication. The frame should not extend beyond the margins of your page, even though its content will.

3. Place the Photoshop file.
Place the JPG file you created in step 1 in the frame you created in step 2. (Note that if you’re placing text instead of an image, you simply copy the text and cut it, then use InDesign’s Paste Into command.)

4. Fit the content proportionally.
To make the image fill the height of the frame, go to Object > Fitting > Fill Frame Proportionally (Cmnd/Ctrl-Option/Alt-Shift-C).

5. Enable scrolling.
With the frame selected, go to Window > Extensions > Overlay Creator and choose Pan and Zoom from the bottom of the Overlay Creator menu. Click the Pan Only radio button.

6. Preview the scrolling action.
Still in the Overlay Creator panel, click the word Preview in the bottom-left corner of the panel. The page will open in the Adobe Content Viewer and allow you to test its scrolling functionality.

7. Create a vertical version (optional).
While this tutorial is for content that will scroll horizontally to the right and left, the principals are the same for a vertically scrolling frame. To create a vertical version of the scrollable frame, go to the InDesign file with the vertical content and repeat steps 2 through 6.