Publish Online | Extremely slow | InDesign 17.4

[StudioFerz]

Hi, since a couple of days loading of our published documents is extremely slow. Has anybody else experienced this and, if so, is this an Adobe server issue? Maintenance? Docs that were previously loading in a sec now take almost ten to half a minute to load... Fingers crossed this is temporarily and quickly resolved.

{Renamed By MOD}

[Test Screen Name]

On thing to think about: does it say it supports ANIMATED GIF? GIF is a still picture format, and this works well in all web browsers etc. Animated GIF is a special thing, less well supported; so if it just says GIF is supported as an image format (rather than a video format) best to assume it means only the still picture.

[tomb49116655]

According to the tutorials on the in5 website it supports animated gifs. The only issue is it doesn't explain exactly what settings to use when exporting in order to enable them

[Justin Putney]

Hi @tomb49116655,

in5 creator here. in5 does support animated GIFs, but there are a few circumstances where they will be exported as regular images. This article might help: https://ajar.freshdesk.com/support/solutions/articles/26000036415-animated-gifs-don-t-appear-animate...

[rayek.elfin]

@Justin Putney  Thanks for responding personally in this thread.

In my opinion animated GIFs are an outdated file format with too many limits (such as 1bit transparency only), and Animated PNG and Animated WebP show the way forward.

It is possible to insert APNG files in InDesign and set the object export options to use the original file.

Likewise, is it possible to use APNG files (or even Animated Webp files) in In5?

[Justin Putney]

There are wonky ways to do it (as HTML embeds), but until InDesign supports those formats, it won't be simple.

We have an entire video course on the myriad ways that you can use InDesign + in5 to include animation:

https://academy.ajarproductions.com/p/using-animation-interactivity-in-your-in5-project-premium

[Bevi Chagnon - PubCom.com]

... Goes to show that it is a bad idea to rely on a third party service's web servers, because there is no direct point of contact - in particular with a large company like Adobe.

By @rayek.elfin

Good advice for life!

[qwfqwf]

Lol let me guess we should be using IN5 right?

[Nigey-LTA]

Was that dear old Bob mentioning In5. Wonder if Adobe own any shares in
Ajay?

[BobLevine]

I personally do not care what you do or what you use. This is an InDesign-based discussion and if you want to use InDesign to create web-based material (something I would never even consider) then yes, it is my recommendation. 

[Nigey-LTA]

Hi Bob,
Coming back to it, I used to use Indesign to create magazines - I always
expected the pdfs to ‘work’. So the printers would place the pdfs and then
print my magazines for me. If the pdfs hadn’t have worked, I’d have been
stuffed. But they did.

Now I use indesign for web-apps, I expect them to work also. As said
before, the only reason I pay Adobe subs is for this end product, which I
sell to clients. I entirely understand your logic re not relying on Adobe,
but as soon as I sit at my Mac and open Indesign, I’m reliant on Adobe. So
to give Adobe a get-out is not acceptable. If Adobe don’t want to do the
hosting, then they can always give us the option to download the files
can’t they. The reason they guard PO docs is it keeps their subscription
revenue switched on - that’s it!

Nigey LTA

[BobLevine]

Your analogy kind of fails here. If one printer screws up you can go to another. But if you created a PDF that only one printer could handle and they messed it up, you'd have been "stuffed" as well.

As for what you're using InDesign for, well, I would never do so and you've actually listed all the reasons why. I'm not giving Adobe a pass at all which should have been apparent from the beginning, but blaming Adobe is not going to make your clients happy at all. It will reflect poorly on you and your choices of tools.

Yes, I'm a fan of in5. I've known Justin for years and I know the work that's gone into it. But...and this is a big one...I have only used it to produce content that is to be used locally; primarily sales material or kiosk presentations for trade shows. It works brilliantly for that but I have uploaded it for clients to test out during production, so I know they work online as well.

I can't keep arguing about the right tool for the right job. I could drive a nail with the back of wrench but a hammer would clearly be a better choice.

[rob day]

If Adobe don’t want to do the hosting, then they can always give us the option to download the files
can’t they.

I think it’s worth pointing out that Publish Online was introduced with CC2015 as an HTML5/JavaScript replacement for the Flash/SWF Export when Adobe decided to abandon Flash/ActionScript.

The appeal of Publish Online is its Flash like fluidity, but if you inspect at the source code it is wildly complex—the export is to a single HTML5 canvas page with layered iFrames driven by complex JavaScript code. I doubt it would be possible to export  complete HTML5 and Javascript code that would transfer to a self hosted server and not break. Given the complexity of the code it’s actually surprising it works as well as it does.

This is just a fraction of the code for a 10 page layout with no animations:

[Nigey-LTA]

Does it matter how complex the code is, if it works I wonder?

[rob day]

It could if you are expecting to transfer it to your own server—this isn’t vanilla HTML5/CSS loading linked pages. There  would likely be server side libraries and setups affecting the page. This seems to be a server problem—the pages do eventually load. I have samples from 2-3 years ago which load fine, they could easily be on a different server.

[Nigey-LTA]

I see, let’s hope it’s sorted soon. Bob’s probably right, the cynic in me
thinks I’d be better off looking for another solution, but don’t think it’s
In5, not for the stuff I’m doing with animations

[BobLevine]

The only weak spot I've found (which may have been fixed) is with custom animation paths. The real issue to me is depending on hosting that is totally out of your control. I've had issues with hosting companies in the past but they are dedicated hosting companies...that's all they do...so they fix this kind of thing in a hurry.

[Nigey-LTA]

Understand what you’ve saying, if In5 was seamless from Indesign, then I’d
probably been using it by now based on my experience with adobe support
over past 8 months! But it isn’t, so as a business i have to generate
sales, then do my Indesign work, then have to repurpose for In5 losing
custom animations which is what my clientbase seem to really like - having
a little animation seems to open the door to their ad revenue - that simple
really

[BobLevine]

All good...again, I hope it gets fixed.

[rayek.elfin]

It's simple enough to reach the page code: use Firefox Developer, right-mouse click the content, and select This Frame-->Show Only This Frame.

Then save the page. FD will save all files, but here is the snag: text and type is converted to SVG - which sounds great, but they will not save with the rest of the page and its assets. These SVG files must be saved manually: and that only works by opening each SVG in a browser tab! As far as I can tell the SVG files are scrambled on the server, and even right-mouse clicking to save a SVG will not work.

The saved page will work in the browser when opened. But it is left aligned, and the page is not cropped, which means all assets that are larger than canvas size or animate into the canvas do not look right.

All of which means it is too much work (probably).

It is much simpler to just use the existing FXL exporter plugin. It works well. It centers the content in the browser, and a simple overflow:hidden; CSS property assigned to the first DIV parented to the BODY tag hides the border content nicely.

Of course, no responsive behaviour (you'd need to code this in JS and the transform scale() property) and no nice page navigation interface. It would have to be coded as well.

[Nigey-LTA]

Have a business to run, sales to make - time is of the issue. Servers seem
to have speeded up a bit today thankfully 🙂

[Nigey-LTA]

Yes, and having docs in PO means you definitely cannot cancel your
subscription - costs everyone an awful lot of time trying to get through to
engineering team for resolution

[BobLevine]

Exactly. You're married to it. It's why I don't use Squarespace, Wix or Duda for websites. You're married to that, too.

If what you're seeing here hasn't changed your mind on what you can and cannot depend on to support your business and/or clients, well, fool me once...

[Rishabh_Tiwari]

Hi @tomb49116655 ,

Sorry to hear about the trouble. We have logged a bug for this issue, and the Engineering team is working on deploying the fix. Please stay tuned to this discussion for updates.

Regards

Rishabh

[qwfqwf]

Hey!

So we're all in the same position with presentations that aren't loading
waiting for a fix that should be coming tonight, fingers crossed!

[Nigey-LTA]

Hi there,
The problem’s with Adobe servers and setup. Lots of people experiencing the
same problems unfortunately