If you have a PDF that you would like to convert to HTML5, you have a variety of options. Because in5 is an InDesign plugin, the interactive features and conversion to HTML5 let you take advantage of InDesign’s features. The best way to convert your content to HTML5 is to start with the original InDesign document and export with in5. However, even though there is no mechanism for directly converting an existing PDF to HTML with in5, there are some ways to start with a PDF and export HTML 5 with in5 without having the original InDesign layout.
Ways to get the PDF into InDesign
There are a few
Convert the PDF back to an InDesign document
This option converts the entire document to something you can edit in InDesign, which will give you the most flexibility.
If the PDF was created in InDesign, you are online, and you have signed into your Adobe account; you can use the PDF to InDesign feature currently in beta at the time of this article’s publishing. Locate the public InDesign (Beta) with Adobe CC to convert your PDF back into an InDesign document. Then you can export the InDesign layout with in5.
You could instead use a third-party tool, such as PDFMarkz (or the older PDF2DTP), to convert your PDF to an InDesign document so that you can export it with in5. These are commercial options, but have been around for much longer and may work better than InDesign’s brand new (beta) feature.
Place the pages of the PDF onto individual pages
Alternatively, you can insert the PDF pages into InDesign as objects, but they won’t be editable and they’ll simply get exported as images.
Place (File > Place…) the pages of the PDF onto individual pages in a new InDesign document as images. Select Show Import Options in the Place dialog box so that you can select All pages.
The cursor changes into a Place Gun loaded with each page of the PDF as an individual image that you can add to each page separately. Then export this InDesign document with in5.
Note: as placed images, the pages from the PDF won’t retain their original interactivity, and you may need to adjust the image quality to increase the resolution so that text in the PDF that has been converted to an image will be clearer.
Create a document that links to the PDF
You could instead decide to create a document that is made to be online and links to your PDF. Here are a few ways to do that:
- Export the HTML5 content with the Viewer Display and add a downloadable PDF that in5 can generate from InDesign or that you can create separately and specify as the downloadable PDF.
- Create a hyperlink to a PDF.
- Create buttons in an InDesign document to go to the PDF and add the folder than contains the PDF as a resource.
in5 vs PDF Flipbook Makers
Although it is possible to create a flipbook from a PDF with an online service instead of in5, exporting your content with in5 directly from InDesign has multiple advantages over these services.
First, be aware that the PDF format doesn’t support most of the interactive features in InDesign.
In order to add interactivity to a flipbook from an online service, you need to learn how to use their proprietary tools.
Additionally, if you need to make a change in the original document, you’ll need to re-export it after making changes, bring it back into the proprietary tool, and re-make all of the interactivity.
Instead of learning how to use proprietary tools, you can create your content using the familiar tools in InDesign and export your content with in5. And your changes will always live with your InDesign file. You can simply re-export with in5.
You also don’t need to be limited to creating a flipbook. With in5, you can turn your content into a variety of types of interactive content:
- Flipbooks (of course)
- Modern digital (an online publication with fade-in transitions between pages and the Viewer Display which is a navigation bar with a variety of options)
- Longform ebook
- Mobile app
- Web app
- One-page site (a vertically scrolling site with no spaces between the pages)
- Landing page (responds more like a traditional website)
- Microsite
- Scrolling Doc (a vertically scrolling publication with spaces between the pages)
- Banner Ad (for Google Ads)
- Presentation
- Animated GIFs (created using InDesign animation presets and the in5 Animated GIF Maker)
- MP4s (also created using InDesign animation presets and the in5 Animated GIF Maker)
In addition, with other services, you only have access to your online content there while you have an active subscription with them, and they only store your content for 90 days after your subscription ends. After that, your HTML5 content gets deleted.
If archiving your content is a concern, rest assured that the content you export with in5 is yours to keep and will continue to work–even after your subscription ends. If you need to re-export from InDesign, you would need an active subscription.
If you’d like to try the approaches described here in order to turn your PDFs into HTML5 content with no coding required, download the free trial of in5:
Download the free trial of in5
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What are the advantages of using InDesign and in5 for creating interactive HTML5 content?
Primarily that you don’t have to code. You can use InDesign’s layout tools and easily create interactivity. in5 will do the heavy lifting of turning that into functioning HTML5 for you.
Another enormous advantage is that your content remains an InDesign document and therefore can be used for any other needs.
From a branding perspective, this makes it much easier to keep related materials (e.g. a landing page, a poster, a three-page flyer) in the same style. My experience is that it’s much harder to maintain a consistent look when you have designers working in InDesign and others working on some web template.