*** From the Archives ***
This article is from April 2, 2009, and is no longer current.
Beware First and Last Page of SWF Exported as Spreads
Steven wrote:
I have a question regarding the export of InDesign files to SWF, as spreads. I did this recently for the first time, using an 8-page brochure set up as facing pages. However, when I viewed the swf file, the first page had a white page to the left of it. The same thing happened with the last page — a white page to the right, showing all of the elements bleeding off the right side of my INDD file’s last page.
I agree that this is not immediately intuitive. After all, in the InDesign document there is no page to the left of the first page or to the right of your last page. But when you export a SWF file with the Spreads checkbox turned on, the swf does in fact appear as a left-and-right-page spread even on the first and last page.
Basically, when you turn on Spreads, InDesign sets the width of the swf to the widest “page” in the document, which it typically the width of a spread. That’s why it looks correct if it’s just a one- or two-page InDesign file, but changes after the third page. That’s frustrating if you’re trying to create a “booklet” effect that appears to have a cover.
I wish I had a good solution for you, but I don’t. In general, if you want it to look like “spreads” you’ll need to design a double-wide front page. Or use PDF, which is really better at displaying booklets.
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My advice is: Make you first spread two-sided, like other spreads and use that extra empty space for something. If you dont have Table of Contents, may be you could put it to left side of cover page. TOC is active in SWF, when user click some item in it, SWF jumps to right page.
Once I put small thumbnail images of every spread there, converted them to buttons and assigned goto page actions to them. (with export command, it´s possible to create jpeg-files from spreads, and with very low resolution (20ppi) they become very small) That might work if you have fairly short document…. It took some 15 minutes to create thumbnails, place them and assign actions for 28-page document.
Or you can create Index for products or persons or whatever if you need alphabetical list of content. Index is also active. And cross-references too…
If you have next/previous page buttons etc. you can put there some instructions how to use them in SWF. And you can also tell that there are some functions behind mouses right button, like (crappy) zoom …
And of course you can put there some hyperlinks to other resources like www-pages or PDF-version of you publication…
I prefer the pdf version too for most of my work, but sometimes the swf page turn looks cool for a brochure. In those cases this is what I do.
1. Add two more pages to your document. Instead of a single first page and last page, combine the two into a spread. Now the entire document will be spreads of two pages.
2. First and last page, fill it with a solid background (R – 153, G – 153, B – 153). Thats the color of the html background. Start content and page numbering from the second page. (I prefer to change the colors to solid black: Changing both the solid fills in the indesign document and modifying the html background color)
3. Thats it. The first and last pages merge with the background and all you see are the individual facing first and last pages, and everything in between.
4, Example file is in this link
https://www.identitidesign.com/test/test.html
Great idea! Many thanks ;)
Thanks for responding to my question, David. And thank Petteri and Arun for your suggestions – both are good ideas that I will use.
Cheers,
Steven
Has this problem been solved? I want to have a cover and back page. Any other programs I can use?
ghetto answer: make the first and last page the same color as the background of the SWF file. R:153 G:153 B:153
Love, love, LOVE this!
THIS IS BRILLIANT. Totally just saved my day!!
Kara! Yours was the best answer out of them all. I’ve watched a couple tutorials and read up on this all afternoon and you just made my day. The simplest answer was the best answer. Thank you!
Hello. I have a 44 pages Indesign document that I would like to export to SWF format to create a flipbook effect web document for my website. I am able to export individual pages, however, I am not abel to export the full document.
I keep getting this error messages: Id Failed to export the file.
Any help will be appreciated.
You cant remove it, but if you want it to look like a single page I would advise to make the first and last page into a double spread and change their colour to the same as the background colour which is 7f7f7f
This will make the spare pages the same colour as the background so you wont even see them. Hope this helps.