It sounds like I’m exaggerating doesn’t it?

I’m not.

Almost none of the interactivity in an interactive PDF actually works, even in Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Reader.

What doesn’t work in a PDF

Here’s a list of things that you can create with InDesign that don’t work in a PDF:

• Animation
• Video*
• Animated GIFs
• Multi-State Objects
• Embedded HTML content (like YouTube videos)
• Button actions related to several of the above items
• Scrollable Frames
• Custom page transitions (like flipbook pages)

*Video was supported previously in Acrobat and Adobe Reader, but it was dependent on the Flash Player (which no longer comes bundled with the Adobe apps).

The introduction of smartphones and tablets—almost none of which now support Flash—and a slew of new PDF readers, essentially guarantee that interactive PDF features will not work when your clients view your PDFs.

To see the breakdown of an interactive PDF in action, and to get a sneak peek at the solutions that I describe below, you can watch the following video.

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I often get asked about accessibility and 508 compliance.

In this article, I’m going to demystify this topic by doing the following.

1. Explain accessibility and 508 compliance in simple, straightforward terms
2. Provide some general strategies for improving accessibility in your HTML content
3. Provide some specific strategies for exporting accessible, 508 compliant HTML from InDesign using in5

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A question came in on the in5 Answer Exchange about how to create a progress bar to indicate the reader’s position within the page count.

This technique is popular with online news magazines.

In the following article, I’m going to show you how to create such a progress bar by attaching a single file when exporting your HTML from InDesign.

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Yes, InDesign. The page layout tool.

InDesign Hidden Gems

While InDesign is known for print layout, it also has extensive interactive capabilities, including:

• An Easy-to-use Animation Panel
• A Timing Panel to create sequenced animation
• The ability to create different Object States that change with interaction
• Interactive actions for Buttons and Form Elements

Just because InDesign was originally conceived as a page layout tool, doesn’t mean you have to create things that look like books.

In this article, I’ll show you how use InDesign’s interactive features and the in5 HTML5 export to create a web banner.

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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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