InDesign Liquid Layouts: What are they good for?

Liquid Layouts were an idea ahead of their time. They let you create "rules" governing how the items on your InDesign pages would adjust scale and change position if the InDesign page were to change size.

This liquid ability was no doubt the InDesign team's solution a problem that was on its way: the mass availability of smartphones and tablets of various screen sizes, and the need to create digital content for these new devices.

The Liquid Layout feature pre-dated what would be the web's solution to this problem: CSS Media Queries.

There's a motto in investing, "being early is the same as being wrong." Here, the InDesign team's efforts were early, and Liquid Layout Rules do not map well to CSS Media Queries.

So what are Liquid Layouts good for?

Liquid Layouts still have two excellent uses, both connected to Alternate Layouts:

1. To more quickly create Alternative Layouts, with less rework.
2. To create Responsive Layouts, using the in5 add-on.

Read the entire article to learn more.