Understanding interactive layouts

Creating an interactive layout within a project is easy. Developing multimedia content for the layout, planning the user interaction, and then pulling it all together in QuarkXPress, however, is more of a challenge. The resources, skills, and time involved include:

• Multimedia files: Although you can create some buttons and other interactive pieces in QuarkXPress, presentations can be more compelling if you integrate sound, video, and animations. This means you need to create or legally acquire some multimedia files.

• Plan of interaction: To make the best use of the media, you need a plan. As with print, start with the goal. What are you trying to communicate? How will the user interact with the piece? Do you need to collect information from the user? You may want to create a flow chart or thumbnails of pages.

• The building blocks: The interactive layout will generally combine multimedia files with QuarkXPress objects and planned interactivity. The process of converting simple QuarkXPress items into interactive objects such as buttons and menus is nonintuitive and somewhat cumbersome. Give yourself time to learn the features and experiment with different options.