in5 2.3 Adds Lazy Loading Images for Faster Load Times and Convert Selections to Web Overlays for DPS

Convert Selection to a Web Overlay

This feature lets DPS users take advantage of the wonderful Animation and Timing Panels in InDesign.

Credit for this feature goes to Keith Gilbert who came up with a way to use content exported by in5 to include native InDesign animations in DPS projects. Keith wrote up the idea on InDesign Secrets and suggested that we automate these steps as a feature. Which is exactly what we’ve done. So, now you can simply make a selection and right-click (or use the Object menu) and choose Convert Selection to Web Overlay Using in5…. A special version of the in5 dialog will then appear, and once you’ve selected the options you’d like and clicked OK, in5 will export the content, create a Web Overlay (animation and all) inside your current document, and hide the original content in a separate layer.

Lazy Load Images

Lazy Load Images will only load images on the current page and neighboring pages, rather than loading all of the images in the document right away. This is a feature we’ve wanted to add for quite some time, so we’re glad that we can finally make it available!

Turning this option on can dramatically reduce the load time in the browser, especially for long documents. There’s not much of a downside to this feature, so it is turned on by default.

Bookmark Linking within “Tall” Pages

Version 2.3 also adds the ability to link to locations within pages using Bookmark Anchors. This feature came about based on a request on the Answer Exchange. To create vertical chapters in Baker Framework output, in5 supports creating taller pages that can be scrolled vertically (swiping takes the reader to the next “chapter”). We even added a script that could merge multiple pages into one tall page. Doing so, however, made it difficult to link to locations inside of the tall page. Now, you can create a Bookmark Anchor (a bookmark from within a text frame), and use a button to link to that Anchor, and clicking that button will now take the reader to the tall page and scroll to the anchor location.

Added Video Options

We’ve had a couple of requests to support the None Video Controller skin option, so we’ve added support that option, which will hide the control bar at the bottom of a video (when not in fullscreen mode). Choosing any other skin will show the full controller in the output.

We’ve also had a few requests for the Play Full Screen Video Overlay option. This option allows a video, once reached (or clicked to play), to take over the screen. This works best on a browser and device that supports this behavior.

Support for Top and Left Pull Tabs

Pull Tabs are essentially a nice hack of the Scrollable Frame Overlay. To see screenshots of pull tabs in action, check out this InDesign Secrets article where Keith Gilbert has some tips and tools for pull tabs. Pull tabs are simply scrollable areas with the scrollbar hidden and they rely on a touch device. in5 has supported tabs that start at the bottom or right side of the screen for quite some time because they simply required scrolling functionality, but tabs at the top and left were essentially inverted, so the browser didn’t realize that scrolling was desired. Even though there was overset content in the frame, it was in the wrong direction. So we’ve added some code in the output to recognize this and to trick the browser into scrolling normally. Hopefully this will be helpful for fans of pull tabs.

Download the update

You can update your current version or test a trial version of in5 by visiting the download page.

Other fixes in version 2.3

Here’s a list of other items that we’ve updated for the latest version:

• Updated Add to Home Screen graphics for iOS 8.
• Fixed tap start on Image Sequences.
• Fixed error in non-English versions of InDesign caused by none swatch.
• Fixed syntax for transform origin in webkit.
• Fixed error with ampersands in video paths.
• Fixed errors that may occur when scrollable frames exist inside of other scrollable frames.
• Fixed in5 footer position on Baker and LSPS output options.
• Fixed error related to Custom Rasterization and update in5 to support new settings in CC 2014.
• Fixed nested text frames that are marked as scrolling frames but do not have scrolling content.