"Liquid layout" said to answer demands to deliver mags on multiple devices

Condé Nast was among the first of the world's major magazine companies to jump onto the iPad, but even their enthusiasm is being tested by the variety of devices and somehow getting their content onto various-sized screens looking halfways decent. 

Scott Dadich, the vice-president of content innovation told a London advertisers' briefing on Wednesday (reported in paidContent)  that getting a coherent workflow that will adapt to multiple devices -- including mobile phones -- has a been a real challenge. 

“Frankly, the technology really hasn’t caught up to that notion of a high-fidelity design that is adaptive. The adaptive web is teaching us a lot about what that’s going to look like. We’re working toward liquid layout with our friends at Adobe. It has springs and cushions in it so it can fit on different screens with the same kind of experience.”

According to the story, an upcoming upgrade to Adobe InDesign will allow designers to make pages through HTML5 that adjust for different device sizes, following "liquid layout rules". It's the holy grail for Condé Nast (and for its competitors) which has always maintained that it wanted to publish something once and distribute it everywhere. It's been elusive and hard work.

There was a sneak preview of the "liquid layout", that can be seen in the video below.