October of 2014 brought good news for designers using Adobe InDesign CC. The upgrade (2014.1) fixed a number of issues and added some new features for fixed layout ePub documents.

The Good News

Here are some of the improvements we have noticed:

  • The problem with modified font styling has been fixed. You can now pseudo condense or expand a text styling without the fear of the text output becoming distorted. 
  • Hyperlinks have been fixed. You can now use the Table of Contents feature for InDesign and expect an entry on your Contents page to link to its hyperlinked page. Other hyperlinks should also work as expected.
  • Options for animation have been expanded. We will look at some of the possibilities and problems in this and future blogs.

Built In Animation – Motion Presets

The animation that was available for Interactive PDF in InDesign 5.5 and 6.0 is now available for ePub fixed layout. At last count there are 39 Motion Presets in InDesign CC, giving users animation options from flying a page item in from any side of the document (“Fly in from…”) to “Dance.”

These options are made available in InDesign’s Animation Panel which is accessed from the Window > Interactive menu item. Select the item you want to animate and open the panel. The panel will suggest a name for the animation. From there you choose the Animation Preset and a number of options.

These options include: 

  • play one time, or loop. 
  • duration (time)
  • speed (which includes easing (ease in and ease out)

If you disclose the Properties triangle in this panel, you can set up your animation to include further refinements. To make sure your animation performs as expected, you can preview it using the Preview button at the bottom of this panel.

InDesign's Animation panel for assigning motion presetsAnimation panel with Speed options disclosed

So What About Automation?

You can automate InDesign’s built-in animations using your favorite scripting language (AppleScript or ExtendScript). These can include the motion presets or any number of custom animations you write that may include timing and multiple actions.

Just think of the number of times you might want to animate a fly in or fade in when the page is opened. The following AppleScript should open the door to writing some simple motion preset scripts. With these scripts assigned to a keyboard shortcut, the animation could be attached to a page item with just a single combination keystroke.

The script allows the user to choose from a list of motion presets. Loop is set to false with a 1 second duration. For a “fly in”, the object to be animated is placed at the page position intended when the animation concludes. With the item selected, the script is run and one of the “fly in” motion presets is chosen. The script does the rest.

Beginning Animation

   --prompt to be used for choose from list method
   set thePrompt to "Choose preset from list"
   tell application "Adobe InDesign CC 2014"
      --get list of motion presets
      set theList to name of Motion Presets
      try 
         --call routine to have user choose motion preset to use
         set presetChoice to my chooseFromList(theList, thePrompt, 1, false)
         set presetRef to MotionPreset presetChoice
         --assumes user has a page item selection
         set itemRef to item 1 of selection
         tell animation settings of itemRef
            set plays loop to false
            set duration to 1 --1 second
            set preset to presetRef
            --the option is actually "to current location"; thus two "to's" in the following statement
            set design option to to current location
         end tell
      on error errStr --if error condition, alert the user
         activate
         display alert errStr
      end try
   end tell
   (*Handler presents a choose from list dialog from which to select the preset*)
   on chooseFromList(choiceList, thePrompt, defaultChoice, allowMultiple)
      set userChoice to choose from list choiceList with prompt thePrompt default items defaultChoice multiple selections allowed allowMultiple
      if class of userChoice is not list then
         error "User cancelled"
      else
         set presetName to item 1 of userChoice
         end if
      return presetName
   end chooseFromList

The list of motion presets can be a little daunting when presented as a list box (choose from list). Alternatively, you could have the script display a custom dialog to present a drop down of motion preset choices for the user

You might even think in terms of having a number of custom animation scripts tucked away in a dedicated folder. The scripts in this folder would then be run using do Script. For this, another script, “Run Script,” can be used to present the list of scripts for the user to choose from. When a name is selected by the user, the script is run.

Run Script

This script assumes the user has a document open with the script’s target page open. For the following, the scripts are located in a folder named “doScripts” inside InDesign’s Presets folder.

tell application "Adobe InDesign CC 2014"
      set appPath to file path as string
      --place designated folder path in a variable
      set scriptPath to appPath & "Presets:doScripts:"
   end tell
   --get list of file names from designated folder
   set fileNames to list folder scriptPath without invisibles
   set thePrompt to "Choose script from list"
   --see call to chooseFromList handler in script above
   set userChoice to chooseFromList (fileNames, thePrompt, 1, false)
   set scriptRef to scriptPath & userChoice
   tell application "Adobe InDesign CC 2014"
      do script file scriptRef
   end tell

You will need to add the chooseFromList handler from the script above to complete. You should also add code to make sure the user has a document open. If the script might do damage to an active page, your script should also alert the user to this potential and execute do script only after the user confirms.You may think of other refinements to the scripts, but these should get you started.

Onward and Upward

It is hoped that these two examples will whet your appetite for creating some scripts to save time and enforce consistency. Next week we will be looking at some sample code for creating custom animations. All of these will be done inside InDesign and will work when the fixed layout ePub is viewed in iBooks.