Is InDesign at ePUB’s reaching its limits?

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    • #14328425
      Enrico Pflanz
      Participant

      I want to build an ePUB in InDesign with a drop-down menu that is interactive like a website. For example with the function fold in and fold out tabs. When testing, however, I reach my limits.
      Can I even realize a website as an ePUB without using HTML and Java?
      Unfortunately I have not found a way to upload my test file to you. I’m still new here. The forum was a tip from a member of the Adobe Evangelists.
      Thanks for your support
      Enrico

    • #125757
      David Blatner
      Keymaster

      EPUB is made of HTML and javascript. But you can do many things when making an EPUB in InDesign without having to code.
      Menus? It’s possible. You might find some tricks in one of these two courses:
      https://www.linkedin.com/learning/indesign-fixed-layout-epub-interactive-techniques-publish-online
      or
      https://www.linkedin.com/learning/indesign-creating-animations

    • #125758
      Enrico Pflanz
      Participant

      Thank you very much for the links,
      but these are simple animations, I need advanced animations for my project! Can I manually write my animations in HTML5 and use them in InDesign?
      Do I have to code advanced functions? How to reset one or more animations with a switch, for example?

    • #125759
      Aaron Troia
      Participant

      Wow, if you are going to take the time to code your animations with HTML5 (or any animation with JS/CSS3/HTML5), it might be cleaner—and possibly less of a headache in the long run—to do it after export in the HTML. If you are placing it in InDesign then exporting, it’s going to be running through InDesign’s exporter and, well, you dont know exactly how it’s processing your code, so it’s just one more thing that _might_ cause something to break. I’m not saying it will, you would need to test it(!) to see.

    • #125775
      David Blatner
      Keymaster

      Enrico: You can place arbitrary HTML into InDesign with Object > Insert HTML. But as Aaron says: you will need to be careful and test it.
      There are other ways to do fancy HTML things, such as custom CSS, as mentioned in this article about adding scrolling text frames:

      Adding a Scrolling Frame in FXL and Publish Online

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