FrameMaker – Aligning frames in HTML5 output
Author’s note: I’ve included a step-by-step video below, in case you need to solve this specific problem in your own work.
I’ve written and presented many times on FrameMaker’s ability to publish to HTML5 and other web/mobile-friendly formats. I love how easy it is to work with HTML5 and how gorgeous the output is, especially when compared to formats like WebHelp and CHM.
But one thing comes up again and again with clients and in the forums. Some anchored frame positions are unwieldy in all of FrameMaker’s digital output (except PDF), regardless of the format.
Specifically, when you’re setting anchored frames to use a Run Into Paragraph setting (usually setting alignment to Right) your graphics may stack up on the page at specific widths.
Theoretically, you should be able to manage this using Object Styles and an output template, but in practice, I’ve found that the output template in both FrameMaker 2015 and 2017 doesn’t recognize the Object Styles as it should.
As a result, to change the alignment of those frames in your output, you’ll need to alter the Object Styles in your document before publishing. The easiest way to do this is to import only the Object Styles from your Publish output template manually into your file or your book prior to publishing. Of course, that means that you’ll need to import the standard (print/authoring?) definitions of your output template to get back where you started.
It’s not ideal, but I’m hopeful that we’ll get either a patch or a fix in a future update of FrameMaker that remedies the Object Style oversight within the Publish output template.
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