*** From the Archives ***
This article is from September 18, 2017, and is no longer current.
It’s InDesign Publish Online Week
This week, we’re working with Adobe and Lynda.com/LinkedIn Learning to spread the word about how great Publish Online is. Video titles and articles that show how to use Publish Online will be “unlocked” this week, and available for free. And we’re offering a special discount on InDesign Magazine subscriptions. Wanna join the party? Read on!
What is Publish Online?
If you want to publish your InDesign layout to the web with some cool interactive features, there is no simpler way than Adobe’s Publish Online. With just a few clicks, you can publish your document with animation, audio and video, buttons, and multi-state objects. You also don’t have to worry about how your layout might change when it’s published, because it will look exactly as you designed it. Publish Online also has built-in analytics so you can see how your readers are connecting with the document. And it’s also incredibly easy to update a document when you want to change it, and to share the document via social media, embed it on a website, or offer a PDF version for download. Oh, and if you’re a Creative Cloud subscriber, there is no additional cost or limitation on how many documents you can publish. Yes, there’s a lot to love about Publish Online.
Here’s an example of a Publish Online project that I created earlier this year, while at CreativePro Week in Atlanta, after an unforgettable visit to Old Car City, USA.
I’ve also shared some cool examples in the Publish Online Project of the Month series, including the Cyberfolio of Michel Allio and Irish Landscapes.
InDesign Magazine Discount and Free Content
To help spread the word about Publish Online, we’ve jumped on the bandwagon with Adobe and Lynda.com to take part in Publish Online Week. Here’s the scoop:
For this week only, use the discount code IDPUBON to get $10 off a one-year Premium Membership, which of course includes 12 issue of InDesign Magazine, exclusive templates, access to over 100 back issues, and more.
Sign up here! (don’t wait—that discount code expires on September 25)
We’ve also unlocked an awesome piece of Premium content about Publish Online here at InDesignSecrets: Diane Burns’ feature article from InDesign Magazine, Using Publish Online.
It’s over 4000 words on everything you need to know to get the most out of Publish Online. And for this week, you just need to be logged in as either a free or Premium member to view the article.
And speaking of Diane, you should also check out her curated gallery of great Publish Online projects, created in, you guessed it, Publish Online:
That’s pretty meta, Diane! ;)
Unlocked Lynda.com Courses
Also, Lynda.com is joining in the fun by unlocking several courses that showcase Publish Online, so they’re free to the public. Here’s the schedule:
Tues, Sep 19 – InDesign: Publish Online by Diane Burns
Wed, Sep 20 – InDesign: Creating Animations by Diane Burns
Thurs, Sep 21 – InDesign: Fixed-Layout EPUB Interactive Techniques & Publish Online by Keith Gilbert
Fri, Sep 22 – InDesign: Interactive Documents by Mike Rankin <—hey, that’s me!
Each course will be unlocked for one week, starting on the dates listed.
Facebook Livestream
Want to see Publish Online in action live? Check out the Facebook livestream by Adobe Evangelist Terry White on Tuesday, September 19th at 1pm Pacific time.
Social Media Sharing
Got a Publish Online project you’d like to show off? Post a link on social media using #IDPubOn. We’ll all be watching. Show us what you got!
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Publish Online is perhaps the only bit of significant good news with InDesign since CC appeared and Adobe—to all appearances—zeroed out the new feature development budget for it.
Among Publish Online’s benefits are:
1. Companies with a host of employee manuals can update and post the most recent version there. That saves a lot of printing costs. The same might be true of catalogs.
2. Writers such as me no longer need to spend money on review copies and mailing costs. We can simply link to a Publish Online version that looks almost identical to the print version.
The downside is that Adobe has yet to give us a way to create a gateway to those online documents, meaning a page with links to all the documents whose existence we want to publish, perhaps even one with a shorter, saner address than the current ones. In my case, that could be used to link to samples of my books. That’d also benefit businesses.
In the absence of “shorter, saner addresses,” one interim solution is to use an external URL shortener (like bitly, etc), with a custom-chosen handle.
This of course doesn’t change the final destination address, but at least it can make remembering and sharing the URLs easier and more intuitive.
I agree that Publish Online is an awesome technology… Adobe has really made it incredibly easy to use. (Though these resources in this article bring out some great tips & tricks.) Every InDesign CC user should at least try it.
Publish Online is great! I’m able to create content with animations in a way that’s easy to share with others using the tool I love to use every day. I feel like it’s a really good way to start getting into designing for screens if you’re a print designer.
Publish Online is a fantastic tool that makes be able to provide an interactive content from my print design. I look forward to getting more features.
I am a designer at BHGE and we use publish online to create digital brochures. They are embedded into the landing page for the product.
This is my most recent
https://indd.adobe.com/view/c87f4931-cab2-4544-aad7-52e066dfaa81
Nice work.
Publish online doesn’t work! I have tried so many times and it gets stuck on 96% all the time. Any help?
I tried it and it is quite ok! @Andy if you are having problems with Adobe’s Publish Online you could also try out other online publishing software – there are a ton on the market!