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James Gifford—NitroPress
Legend
November 7, 2024

That it's on an Adobe sub-page should answer the question. 🙂

 

It is (unless I am completely mistaken) an InDesign Publish Online production, which is created in InDesign. The limitation to PO projects is that they MUST be hosted on this site, which is not ideal for many intended users and is not guaranteed to be stable or even supported at any time in the future.

 

It is not in any way an EPUB, which ID also exports but with all the limitations of that format (mostly that EPUB readers vary enormously in function and presentation).

alfredocarbone
Participant
November 8, 2024

Thank you James,


I can clearly read that it's an Adobe link, but unfortunately I couldn't fully understand the usefulness of your kind comment:

1 - I understand the difference between this publication and an ePub, but unfortunately me and you, too were unable to give me a more specific name. For the same reason, I don't understand why you recommend me a guide for ePub, honestly
2 - my interest, evidently not well communicated, was to understand if it was possible to generate this type of interactivity and animations in Indesign, a hypothesis that seems discarded by your comment, so my doubt about how it was designed is unresolved.
Thanks a lot.

James Gifford—NitroPress
Legend
November 8, 2024

I'm sorry if any of my answer was unclear: I answered your primary question by noting that yes, the example you pointed to is (almost certainly) a Publish Online production from InDesign. So, with adequate overall skills and by accepting the limitation that the page/doc/site will ONLY run from that host at a designated URL, you can duplicate its features with ID.

 

Since we don't know anything about your skill level, experience, potential project or much of anything else, the rest was nust info/editorial to help guide you in either making a choice or asking further questions.

 

The mention of the EPUB book is my standard signature, and wasn't really part of my answer.

 

Derek has already hit the high points on the next level of things. Yes, most online documents are HTML based and where you don't use an export process to manage the actual document creation, you will need web/HTML/CSS skills — in DreamWeaver or a similar tool — to achieve them. From InDesign, you can use Publish Online, as discussed. There is also a new feature that DC mentions, export to fixed HTML5 pages — more or less the core of Publish Online but detached from the PO platform. I've looked at it briefly and am uninterested in its limits, so can't add more.

 

If there's a common takeaway here, it's the essential point that all online displays, especially those using animation and interactivity, are far more dependent on the end format and platform that runs them than the creation tool. It's common to approach the subject with "Can (this tool) do what I want?" when the answer is almost always "Yes, but what format will you be publishing/distributing it in?" It's essential to find a platform/host/format that will work for your needs, and then work BACKWARDS to tools that efficiently produce it.

 

Unfortunately, as I sketched out in my first reply, there is no platform or format that is simple, universal, easy to produce and can incorporate all the animation, fancy stuff, razzle dazzle etc. you might see in something produced by an expert (or team of experts) using a combination of tools and/or custom support code making it all happen. The closest thing to a universal presentation format for this is, as I noted and as DC amplified, HTML+CSS, created directly for display on an up-to-date browser. To rely on any "visual" layout tool — ID, Photoshop, Illustrator, whatever — and expect to be able to simply build or export a complex animated, interactive document is not a good approach. The only solutions from ID, barring that deep technical expertise, are to exploit Publish Online's abilities, or look into the mentioned ID5 plugin, which does very sophisticated export of InDesign layouts to HTML for general web hosting. It is, however, a bit on the pricey side and best for shops that turn out such productions regularly.

 

(My sig follows again. No endorsement or suggestion to use EPUB implied. 🙂 )