Exporting from InDesign to HTML5: Amazing Free Script

David Blatner

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Oh, if I only had a dollar for each time someone asked me: How do I export my InDesign document as HTML, keeping the page geometry (how the page looks), animations, interactive features, and everything!

Well, you asked for it, you got it… and you’re gonna’ like it!

First, some background…

The Problem

InDesign offers a built-in export-to-HTML (using File > Export) but it only exports text and graphics — not the page geometry! So the result looks nothing like your designed page. It was designed for moving document assets to Dreamweaver or giving to a web developer to format.

As users clearly wanted a direct-to-HTML option, Adobe developed a couple of new export options. First, they built a Fixed Layout EPUB (FXL) export. Many people don’t realize that FXL EPUB is written entirely in HTML5. But you can actually crack open an epub file (it’s just a type of .zip file, actually) and find HTML and CSS files. However, EPUB files only work in dedicated EPUB readers, and not everyone has an EPUB reader that can handle FXL.

Then Adobe created a tool called Publish Online. This is a very cool CC service where InDesign users can very easily export an entire document to be hosted on Adobe servers. While I love Publish Online, it requires that you use Adobe’s servers. And, of course, because the HTML is off-limits, you can’t edit it or put it into your own site, or an app, or something like that.

Third Party Solutions

A few years ago, Justin Putney of Ajar Productions developed an InDesign plug-in called in5 which exports HTML5 from InDesign, with not just page geometry, but interactive elements, and far more. Even better, in5 provides a wide variety of additional features to your export, such as swipe navigation on mobile, and lets you easily move your exported HTML into a Web App or even a full app (using PhoneGap, Baker Framework, the Amazon Marketplace, etc.).

Another commercial HTML export tool is BakerExport from Kerntiff, which looks interesting but I believe is still in development.

Ken Jones of Circular Software has also developed some clever ways to post rich-media fixed-layout EPUBs on a web server and function inside a browser window. It takes some customization, but he showed me an example (including read-aloud text) at the recent InDesign Conference, and it was pretty darn amazing.

And now… a free script

Okay, here’s the kicker… last year, Keith Gilbert discovered an undocumented method for exporting HTML from InDesign CC with a script and wrote about it here. At the time, it was really more of an intriguing amusement, and we didn’t feel there was much you would want it for.

However, I was talking with Keith recently when I saw him at The InDesign Conference about HTML export, and he realized he could expand the script, and offer a few new add-on features that makes exporting HTML a viable method. He has now made that available, for free, for anyone to use.

Page Navigation

Here’s the problem: The normal methods for jumping from one page to the next don’t work when exporting HTML with this script. That is, the “Go to Page” buttons or hyperlinks that go to a text anchor or something like that… all of those interactive features break when you export as HTML. The reason is that when you export as HTML, each page of your InDesign document becomes a different HTML page.

For example, here’s a simple two-page InDesign file with interactive elements in it:

And here’s what you get when you export it as HTML with Keith’s script:

You can see that the first page of the document is exported with exactly the same as the InDesign document, but with an html extension. The second page has “-1” after the name, and so on. For those of you who are curious, here’s what’s inside the “resources” folder:

You’ll notice that there are several files here that you could customize if you want — especially the exported css file!

OK, back to the page navigation problem… the normal page navigation features (such as “go to next page” buttons) assume that the final document is a single file (e.g. a single PDF file). But here, you actually need to jump from one html document to another.

So in order to jump from one page to another, you need to create a hyperlink (in the Hyperlinks panel) to that particular page. There are two ways to do this. First, you can create text anchors on each page, and then build hyperlinks to them.

Or second, you can just make your own hyperlinks, which requires that you know what the page is going to be named. Keith has made this process easy for you by creating a second script called “Add page buttons.” When you run that, it creates blank frames on each page and assigns hyperlinks with the proper names. You don’t have to use this script, but it certainly helps. That said, remember that you’ll need to rename the hyperlinks (or re-run the script) if you ever change the name of the InDesign file (because, again, the HTML files are based on the name of the INDD file).

Where Do You Put It?

After exporting the HTML, you can publish it on your own server, put it in Dropbox, or whatever else you’d like to do with it. For example, here’s the above 2-page test file.

So this is incredible, but I want to be clear that this free script is nowhere near as powerful as one of the third-party tools, such as in5. There are also some critical limitations when using this script… for example, objects that bleed onto the pasteboard aren’t cropped off, so they’re fully visible in the exported HTML. It will also only work well with single-sided (non-facing) documents.

Download: Keith’s script is called “Export FXL HTML” and you can find it here. I strongly recommend you read the Read_me.pdf before running the script. Lots more important information in there!

If you need help installing scripts, see this article. After you’ve installed it, it’ll show up in the Scripts panel like this:

Remember that the script is distributed on an “as is” basis… that means neither Keith nor I guarantee it will work for you. Save your work before using it. That said, it has worked very well for me, with the limitations I’ve mentioned.

If you use it for your documents, share the URL below so we can check them out!