Notes from InDesign for the Web Best Practices eSeminar

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As promised, here are my notes from the InDesign for the Web eSeminar.

Along with seventy or so other folks (many of whom hailed from sunny Beverly Hills), I watched Adobe Senior Solutions Engineer Jerry Silverman use InDesign and Dreamweaver CS4 to repurpose print content effectively to the Web. At the end of the session, Jerry provided a link to a PDF of the presentation slides.

Jerry began by making the point that designers need to make a mental leap when switching from print to Web. Because the Web is a dynamic medium where they have less control over the final presentation, they need to think about designing for containers, not content. To begin understanding the concept of containers, check out this interactive CSS Box Model Demo.

While it may be daunting to change mediums, good design is good design. Furthermore, modern web standards (like XHTML and CSS) are the print designer’s friend, because they give you a set of rules to learn and follow, instead of being on your own back in the “Wild West” early days of Web design. Adobe offers a free white paper Deciphering the Web: A Resource for Print Designers (9 pages, 2.8 MB PDF) detailing the process of using CS4 to design and publish to the Web.

Other recommendations to make things easier when using InDesign to design for the Web

• set your InDesign measurements to points (which are equivalent to pixels)
• use RGB color swatches (along with the Kuler panel in CS4)
• if your designs use transparency effects, set the Transparency Blend Space to Document RGB
• create a Web design workspace with just the panels you need

Jerry worked with a newsletter example in InDesign CS4 and exported the content to XHTML via File > Export for Dreamweaver. He then showed how to add design with Cascading Style Sheets in Dreamweaver. Some of my favorite tips were how to use Dreamweaver’s Code Navigator feature and how to use the Dreamweaver color picker to sample colors directly from an open InDesign document.

For adding interactivity to InDesign content, Jerry demonstrated how to quickly create buttons from frames with the tip of selecting the frame (or group of frames) and just clicking on the Normal state in the Buttons panel.

For more in depth training, Jerry recommended InDesign CS4 Interactive Documents and Presentations by Michael Ninness at Lynda.com. While you’re there, I think David’s tutorial on Ten Things to Know About Interactive PDFs is a must-see.

You can also watch videos and read whitepapers about Flash at the Adobe Flash Developers’ Center.

Jerry spoke about the options to export InDesign content to the Flash formats SWF and XFL, and the pros and cons of each. He also showed Flash Catalyst, which allows designers to use Creative Suite apps to create design elements, then use them to create user interfaces for Flash applications.

To learn more about Flash Catalyst, start at the official Flash Catalyst page at Adobe Labs. For an entire round-up of training videos and opinions check out my post, Flash Catalyst Iron Man Train-athalon at Publicious.

In the post-demo chat, someone asked how to get InDesign content into Flash Catalyst. This isn’t directly possible, but Adobe is aware of the feature request. For now, the workflow would involve an intermediate step going from InDesign to Flash Pro, then export to Flash Catalyst.

Someone also asked if there was a way to automate the creation of hyperlinks in InDesign from URLs. This has been a hot topic in various places, including the InDesign scripting forum where scripter extraordinaire Kasyan Servetsky offered up a solution using Find/Change to make hyperlinks. Also, worth checking out is the URL2Hyperlink plug-in (€19, currently $26 US) by DTP Tools.

After the presentation I made contact with some of the attendees watching the seminar from “90210″. Seem like good ol’ folks to me.