It’s well-known that Adobe InDesign is a powerful layout tool.

It’s slightly less well-known that InDesign is loaded with interactive capabilities (buttons, object states, animation, audio, video, etc).

These interactive capabilities were partially supported by interactive PDFs…until mobile devices came around.

These devices used all different kinds of PDF reader applications, and none supported the Flash-based interactivity inside the PDFs.

Now even the desktop version of Adobe Reader doesn’t automatically come with the Flash Player installed.

So how can a designer make use of all the interactive tools?

HTML can support the interactivity that PDF does not, and it can be viewed on mobile devices.

InDesign has a “technology preview” called Publish Online that publishes a document as HTML onto Adobe’s servers.

This is an amazingly fast way to get your document online and viewable.

However, the content is only hosted on Adobe servers and cannot be saved, moved, or modified.

What if I want to customize my output? Or host it on my own site? Or make it viewable to search engines? Or create an app?

If you want the files to be your own and to host them on your own servers, etc…you’re in luck, but you’ll need to use a tool other than Publish Online.

Keith Gilbert’s free script

Keith Gilbert discovered a hidden scripting object that let him make use of InDesign’s Publish Online export (essentially the same as the Fixed-Layout ePub export) and save the files locally.

The script is awesome and free, but limited in certain ways (e.g., you have to take some extra steps to create working page navigation, but Keith created a script to help with that as well).

in5 (InDesign to HTML5)

in5 is a commercial InDesign to HTML exporter that I launched on Kickstarter several years ago and have fine-tuned over multiple versions.

in5 is fully-featured, supports all of InDesign’s interactivity, and lets you add new kinds of interactivity.

It’s easy to customize, built to host on your own site, has easy search engine optimization features, and the output can easily be converted into a mobile app.

Here’s how it works

1. Create your content with InDesign
2. Export with in5 (File > Export HTML5 with in5…)

(Yes, it’s that simple).

Check out what customers have already made with in5.

There’s a free course to get your started with in5, which includes a lesson on publishing to your own site.

I’m here if you have any questions or need help with in5.

Happy publishing!

I’ve heard from a few people lately asking for introduction to in5.

This post has some resources to help you go from “zero to hero.”

I’ll explain what in5 does and how it can help you publish yourAdobe InDesign content online.

The Very Short Version

in5 lets your export your layout, animation, and interactivity directly from InDesign.

in5 uses InDesign’s own interactive features, so you can focus on your design, instead of learning how to use unfamiliar software.

This video above gives you a quick intro in less than 2 minutes.

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A lightbox—which opens on top of the site (or app) that you are currently viewing—is a great way to load external content, but remain on the same page once the content is closed.

As a designer, a lightbox is a useful tool to keep readers in your “experience” and not force them to find their way back to your page.

Technically speaking, a lightbox loads external content into an <iframe>.

in5 (InDesign to HTML5) let’s you add lightboxes with a single checkbox—no coding or hassle required (and no thinking about iframes)!

The Problem: iOS, Lightboxes, and Multipage PDFs

A handful of in5 customers found that when loading multipage PDFs into a lightbox on iOS devices (iPads and iPhones), you can’t navigate to the second page.

This happens in part because iOS has a PDF viewer built into the web browser.

Normally, the built-in PDF view is quite handy, but when it’s loaded into an iframe, you don’t have access to the page navigation.

Google Drive to the Rescue!

Fortunately, if you

1. upload your PDF to Google Drive and
2. grab a shareable link (details below)

The Google online PDF viewer will let you navigate through all the pages (even in a lightbox).

Simply replace the hyperlink to your PDF with the Google Drive shareable URL.

Other sharing services that can view PDFs online would probably work too (e.g., Dropbox), but you may want to factor in how much user interface (UI) and branding of the service itself adds around the document.

Details on How to Get the Shareable Link

1. While previewing your PDF in Google Drive, go to the fly out menu in the top-right of the viewing window.
   
2. Then grab only the URL portion from the Embed dialog (leave the HTML code).

Google Drive will keep the UI minimal if you add &embedded=true to the end of the URL.

Original Source: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/15480804/problems-displaying-pdf-in-iframe-on-mobile-safari

Bonus Tip

You can also view files through the Google Docs viewer, even if they are external and not hosted on Google Docs, using the URL below:

https://docs.google.com/gview?url=EXTERNAL_URL_TO_YOUR_DOC

Creating hyperlinks from one InDesign page to another or to an outside site is one thing…but what if you’ve exported multiple documents from InDesign and want to connect them together? Is it possible?

Yes! It’s easy to connect multiple documents that you’ve exported to HTML using in5.

The key is using relative URLS, meaning that their paths are related to each other.

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This tutorial will show you how to add a simple password to your app or Web App created with InDesign and in5 (InDesign to HTML5).

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