Creating InDesign articles for multiple platforms?

[#1]

Hello all,

I am currently attempting to use DPS to publish articles accross multiple platforms. So far its all been working great except for the fact that I dont know of a way to curate InDesign articles that will fit on many different platforms (ios, android, windows.) I understand html would be the best way around this problem, but it would be best for my colleuges to use InDesign.

Is there any way to curate content in InDesign that will look great on multiple platforms without remaking the content for each possible screen resolution?

Thanks!

[#2 · Accepted solution]

There is no easy way to do this other than to lay out your content as new InDesign documents for each screen size. It is, to be honest, a total waste of time.

Create one set of articles at 1024x768 and use that across all devices. We'll scale it to fill the screen, letterboxing if necessary, on the vast array of Android and Windows device screen sizes.

Neil

[#3]

I'm placing my bet with Bob. Muse may be a sweet route to HTML article content.

I'd also comment that in the past, with DPS 2014, we would target platforms and had various ways to make discrete content for iPad, iPhone, and everything else (with variations for large/small non-iOS.) But the emphasis and delivery in DPS 2015 falls into phone or tablet, not platform.

The phone/tablet is driven by two factors:

1) The project needs a two top-level system to support

2) separate top-level content structures to customize what's offered to the two device classes and to call appropriate card and layout designs for these classes.

Shift the thought from "platform" to "device class" for DPS 2015.

-Colin

[#4]

Muse will be an even better option toward the end of the year when it’s upgraded to output responsive layouts.

[#5]

I would highly encourage you to look into Adobe Muse - part of the creative cloud suite. It's an intuitive WYSIWYG HTML page creator with an interface and tools that are similar to InDesign. However, its output is HTML, and can easily converted to .article files with the HTML Packager applet. The beauty about HTML article files is, one size fits all!  With Muse, you can create one layout for the tablet (iOS, Android and Windows), and using with the same file, generate another layout for Phone (iOS and Android).  Much more scalable than a fixed size InDesign layout.  Also, it is said that the responsive version of Muse is in the works, so, before long, you can use Muse to do one layout for all of your DPS targets.

It's worth exploring even for InDesign designers!  No code required!

-Tommy