Boston InDesign User GroupMeeting Summary
From InDesign to the Web
Mon, Feb 18th, 2008 at 6:00 PM
Massachusetts College of Art
Event Details
Exporting InDesign documents to the Web -- it's not as complicated as you might think, and it's nothing to be scared of, when you take the proper steps.
Noha Edell and Jennifer Smith made this quite clear to us on the evening of February 18, when they presented the InDesign-to-Web workflow from the perspective of the two important roles in the workflow: the designer and the web developer.
Noha started off by covering styles in detail -- how to create them, save them, import them, and map them. This is a really important foundation for a smooth export-to-Web workflow. She demonstrated how to create an InDesign template, import text, and then apply and map the styles you have already set up.
She then exported her document to XHTML with Empty CSS Declarations, and turned the floor over to Jennifer, who opened the file in Dreamweaver. By exporting the associated text with styles it was easy to add attributes to those styles in Dreamweaver.
Essentially, taking Noha's styles that were created in InDesign, Jennifer was quickly able to remap the content to style attributes appropriate for the web.
Jennifer also showed how to take Object styles directly from InDesign and turn them into div tags in Dreamweaver, thereby allowing the InDesign content to have independent attributes like borders and tinted backgrounds behind the objects contained in the Object style.
During the demo, Jennifer split the view to the Design/Code view and highlighted the resulting exported styles. Then, in the design view, she proceeded to apply formatting to the individual styles, which resulted in HTML codes automatically created in the code view.
She then copied the styles section, and with it created an external CSS -- cascading style sheet. Jennifer then re-exported the same document with a link to the CSS, re-opened the resulting HTML file and, voilà, the styling was automatically applied.
The evening concluded with a huge raffle. Huge thanks to our three major sponsors: Aquent for the awesome speaker and the wonderful books,MassArt for providing a great venue, and Adobe for the copies of InDesign and Dreamweaver. Comments from the evaluation sheets"An amazing, informative presentation that brought home the importance of styles. I can use them now."
"Good content, fast moving. Got lots of tips I can use in InDesign. Inspired to get Dreamweaver."
"Good to see this issue addressed—so many people need to convert documents."
"Very informative. I've been hoping for a topic such as this. This meeting provided a good intro from which I can build off."
"Some good insights into InDesign vis-à-vis Web & Dreamweaver."
"I liked that you used a simplified document for presentation. Easy to follow."
"This was great! Presenters were right on target for our needs."
"Excellent start for print people, refresher for Macromedia user."
"Meeting was excellent, how about one on Interactive PDFs."
"Very good, can always use a review on style sheets and CS3."
"Excellent, the level of material was just right."
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