4 Replies Latest reply: May 7, 2014 10:38 PM by pooja2087 RSS

    Exporting to HTML is yuck!

    shawninvancouver Community Member
    shawninvancouver May 7, 2014 9:03 AM

      Greetings all,

       

      For giggles, I thought I would test out Adobe InDesign's HTML export option. This document is a short 12 page guide that makes use of a large number of graphic elements so my expectations were low, that it would render with an acceptable appearance.

       

      Good thing that my expectations were low because the output was terrible! I attempted difference options... default options broke most of the graphics components out into separate parts... so 12 pages became about 20. Using the "Preserve appearance from layout" helped a lot but it rendered the pages as whole .png images (hardly HTML); even so, their were still a number of other broken parts.

       

      Thankfully, this document was intended as a printed document. But I am wondering if anyone has taken a fairly advanced [graphically] InDesign document and successfully produced an acceptable HTML (5?) output?

       

      BTW, it seems odd that Adobe's forum spell checker thinks that "InDesign" is not a valid word.

        • 1. Re: Exporting to HTML is yuck!
          Bob Levine CommunityMVP
          Bob Levine May 7, 2014 9:09 AM (in response to shawninvancouver)

          What version of InDesign and what exactly are you expecting?

           

           

           

          A well styled document (with styles mapped to tags) will produce excellent HTML that can then be styled using your own custom CSS.

           

           

           

          If want the page geometry, I suggest trying in5. It does a very admirable job of it and it’s under constant development.

          • 2. Re: Exporting to HTML is yuck!
            shawninvancouver Community Member
            shawninvancouver May 7, 2014 9:30 AM (in response to Bob Levine)

            Bob Levine wrote:

             

            What version of InDesign and what exactly are you expecting?

             

            Thanks for the response Bob. I'm using the latest version of InDesign (v9.2.1). I was expecting a reasonably accurate rendition of the printed version... at least much closer than what I got.

             

            A well styled document (with styles mapped to tags) will produce excellent HTML that can then be styled using your own custom CSS.

             

            Yes, I have tagged elements/styles. But the styles are not the problem. The HTML output is pretty much 100% different than the source.

            For example:

            • The font is universally wrong and defaulted to Times Roman (but that is correctable in the css).
            • All font attributes are stripped (bold, etc.).
            • The InDesign drawn [rounded corner] boxes are completely missing (a few dozen).
            • All the distinct pages are gone and everything was placed into a continuous single page. And the top/bottom page borders are missing.
            • Images placed horizontally are now vertically placed.
            • A section depicts a network device (a .png graphic insert) with network cables (made with InDesign drawing tools). The network cables are missing (same as boxes - mentioned above).

             

            ...and so on...

             

            Perhaps I am missing an important export option?

             

            Again... this is not a serious problem. I am just curious about what it would take (or if it is even possible) to output this document in HTML format.

            • 3. Re: Exporting to HTML is yuck!
              shawninvancouver Community Member
              shawninvancouver May 7, 2014 9:49 AM (in response to Bob Levine)

              Bob Levine wrote:

               

              If want the page geometry, I suggest trying in5. It does a very admirable job of it and it’s under constant development.

               

              Just tried IN5 (http://ajarproductions.com/pages/products/in5/) and it is pretty cool. I'm intrigued with its capabilities!

               

              Although its output is closer to 70% of the intended output (that's 70% more than InDesign's native HTML output LOL), it didn't not get the spacing correct. Some of the images and text objects are where they should be but many of these objects are off-set by a large number of h/v pixels in random(?) amounts. I may want to investigate this more, at a later date.

               

              Great find! Thank you.

              • 4. Re: Exporting to HTML is yuck!
                pooja2087 Employee Hosts
                pooja2087 May 7, 2014 10:38 PM (in response to shawninvancouver)

                Hi,

                 

                Thanks for trying out html export from InDesign. I am sorry to hear that you are having issues with html export.

                 

                To start with, I have tried to answer your queries below:

                 

                • The font is universally wrong and defaulted to Times Roman (but that is correctable in the css).

                With which type of fonts you actually faced this issue?  Can you name a few fonts which are not correctly being referenced in the CSS?


                • All font attributes are stripped (bold, etc.).

                font-weight:bold property must be present in the CSS. Can you post a snapshot of the CSS here?

                 

                • The InDesign drawn [rounded corner] boxes are completely missing (a few dozen).

                We actually skip empty splines of InDesign native objects on export. If you wish to include them, you will have to rasterise them. Select the object and open Object Export Options dialog. Select Custom Rasterisation and click on Done. Now if you will export to HTML, the items will be included which are set to rasterise.

                 

                • All the distinct pages are gone and everything was placed into a continuous single page. And the top/bottom page borders are missing.

                All the items are emitted as part of single html file, there is no concept of splitting into multiple html files in html export.

                 

                • Images placed horizontally are now vertically placed.

                 

                I am not very clear about this point. Could you please attach a screenshot to show this issue?

                 

                • A section depicts a network device (a .png graphic insert) with network cables (made with InDesign drawing tools). The network cables are missing (same as boxes - mentioned above).

                Same explanation as in point-3.

                 

                Regards,

                Pooja