in5 v3 Reviewed in InDesign Magazine

first page of review

Inside the latest issue of InDesign Magazine, Keith Gilbert’s review of in5 includes the clearest introduction to using in5 (InDesign to HTML5) and presents the most likely use cases of the product.

If you have any interest in digital publishing or interactivity from InDesign, Keith’s review is a must read.

Keith talks about the new features in latest version, what you can do with the HTML output, compares in5 to the other available options (like EPUB and Publish Online), and highlights some really great customer examples.

The issue is also full of other helpful InDesign topics, like hidden color tools and best practices for numbering pages.

You can buy the issue for $7.95, or get a whole year’s subscription and unlimited back issues for $59.

I’m not affiliated with the magazine. I’m just a fan and an active subscriber.

Visual Thinker Digital Magazine made with InDesign & in5

Creator, Matthew Goodman (who previously made the FunLab Nature Sounds apps), has made another cool project with in5.

This time, he’s created a digital magazine called Visual Thinker and it is a beautiful layout.

Check it out in the video below.

Want to create your own awesome project?

Try in5 for free

Better digital spread export with in5 v3.1.10

image with page items spanning across spreads

When I initially conceived of in5 (InDesign to HTML5), I imagined that designers would be laying out pages specifically for digital projects.

With the Page Formats available inside of in5—a Slider, document-like scrolling pages, liquid layout pages that fill the window— focusing on exporting items within page boundaries made sense.

However, there have always been designers who want to export digital documents from InDesign files which were originally designed for print, with little or no modification.

The previous approach

InDesign presented a bit of a challenge for in5 when spread elements spanned across multiple pages because each layout element has to “belong” to a single page (so it would appear on one page of the spread, but not the other).

For the reasons described above, wrestling with InDesign to get page elements to belong to two pages was not a high priority, so I created a half-measure (though I didn’t realize it was only a half measure at the time).

The Allow Page Items to Span Across Pages within Spreads option in the Advanced section of the in5 export dialog attempted to solve this by copying objects and shrinking their frames so that the copy only resided on the secondary page.

This worked for a rectangle, but only created a distorted copy of a triangle (let alone what it did to a textframe).

Significantly improved rendering of spreads for your digital magazine

With the introduction of the Flipbook with Page Peel format to in5 v3.1—which now supports two-page spreads—there was even more demand to export “print” spreads with spread items that span across two pages.

So, despite the status of 3.1.10 as a “minor” update, it includes a major rewrite of the Allow Page Items to Span Across Pages within Spreads option. You’ll find that the your documents which are designed with two-page spreads export significantly better with the latest version of in5.

The current version of in5 even synchronizes the On Page Load animation of the elements that span pages, so they’ll animate together as if they’re one element, even though they’re on separate pages.

Try the latest version of in5

How to publish your digital magazine from InDesign

content getting transported from InDesign to an ipad

This article will walk you through the process of creating a digital magazine: from the layout in Adobe InDesign to sharing your content on the web or through a mobile app.

It will show you how to use the options within the in5 (InDesign to HTML5) export tool to create your ideal digital magazine layout.

How to Make an HTML5 Flipbook with Interactivity from InDesign

header image with InDesign logo and HTML5 logo

By creating a flipbook directly from InDesign—rather than from a secondary format like PDF—you’ll be able to take advantage of all the rich interactivity from InDesign that isn’t supported in PDF.

How to create an HTML5 Flipbook from InDesign in a nutshell

  1. Build your document with Adobe InDesign
  2. Add interactivity using InDesign’s built in panels (Buttons, Animation, Object States, Hyperlinks, Video, etc)
  3. Install in5 (InDesign to HTML5) and restart InDesign
  4. Export your document to HTML5 with in5 and choose Flipbook with Page Peel as the Page Format

To understand these steps in detail, continue reading below.