Hack 13 Jump to the Next or Previous Heading

Use PDF bookmark information to stride from section to section in Acrobat on Windows.

PDF bookmarks greatly improve document navigation, but they also have their annoyances. When I click a bookmark in Acrobat, shown in Figure 1-13, the document loses input focus. Pressing arrow keys or Page Up and Page Down has no effect on the document until I click the document page. That makes two clicks, and clicking two times to visit one bookmarked page is annoying.

Figure 1-13. A no-click solution to annoying bookmark behavior

So, I created a "no-click" solution for navigating bookmarks. After installing this Acrobat plug-in, you can jump from bookmarked page to bookmarked page by holding down the Shift key and pressing the left and right arrow keys.

Visit http://www.pdfhacks.com/jumpsection/ and download jumpsection-1.0.zip. Unzip, and then move jumpsection.api to your Adobe Acrobat plug-ins directory. This directory is located somewhere such as C:\Program Files\Adobe\Acrobat 5.0\Acrobat\plug_ins\.

Restart Acrobat, open a bookmarked PDF, and give it a try. Hold down the Shift key and press the right and left arrow keys to jump forward and back.

[Hack #97] uses jumpsection as an example of customizing Acrobat with plug-ins. jumpsection does not work with the free Adobe Reader.