InDesign Docs

The new iPad (Generation 3) is out. The new model has twice the resolution of the previous model. What do 1024×768 folios look like on the new device? And what’s the best approach to creating folios to account for the different devices? And when will the new device be fully supported?

When the new iPad finally arrived on my doorstep, I dropped everything to start testing it. The scaled 1024×768 JPG/PNG content looks reasonably good  on the 2048×1536 device. Images look great, and nearly all overlays perform well (and don’t look pixelated when scaled up). Text is noticeably fuzzy in many areas, especially body text and light text against a color background. The performance is excellent, despite the fact that the viewer has to do some extra scaling. The new processor more than compensates for additional scaling calculations.

UPDATE: The issues with viewers on the iPad 3 not being able to display high-resolution (2048×1536) folios have been resolved. With the most recent hot fix (March 23), renditions are now supported, and all app icons are displayed properly. You can submit a v19 viewer to the App Store.

Quick Summary

If you’re in a hurry, here’s the executive summary.

• Use PDF image format instead of JPG/PNG. PDF results in smaller article size and maintains vectors. However, text in interactive overlays is rasterized.
• For single-issue viewers, you cannot create renditions. We recommend creating a single 1024×768 folio with PDF image format. This approach works for all devices, and nearly all content looks good.
• For multi-issue viewers, you have a number of choices. The easiest rendition approach is to create 1024×768 source documents and use these as the basis for both the 1024×768 folio and the 2048×1536 folio. You might want to show/hide layers for certain overlays such as videos and pan & zoom images.

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To create and preview folios, you run two different DPS installers — the Folio Producer tools and the Folio Builder panel.

Why two installers?

Two reasons. First, Adobe doesn’t want to force publishers to rebuild and resubmit their custom app whenever a new set of tools comes out every six or eight weeks. Updating the app should be optional. Second, when Adobe makes certain changes to the Folio Producer Service on the web, the Folio Builder panel needs to be updated to remain in sync with the web client. Publishers need to be able to update the Folio Builder panel without updating the Folio Producer tools.

Should I update when a new version of tools comes out?

That depends on whether you have created a custom viewer app and whether you’re still updating it. If you haven’t created a custom viewer app and submitted it to one of the stores, the situation is simple. Just install the most current versions of the tools, and you’re all set with the new and improved tools.

If you have submitted a custom viewer app to the store, it depends. You have two choices whenever a new set of tools comes out:

(1) Don’t update your custom viewer. Continue using the older set of tools. If prompted, update the Folio Builder panel. Updating the Folio Builder panel does not update the tools.

(2) Update your custom viewer and submit it to the store. Install both the new set of Folio Producer tools and the Folio Builder panel.

Until the new version of the custom viewer is approved and available, don’t create or edit any folios for that app. Otherwise, when your customers try to view a newer folio in an older viewer, they’ll be prompted to update their app. Although viewers are backward-compatible with previously created folios, folios usually cannot be viewed in earlier viewers. That’s new wine in old bottles. (Or is it old wine in new bottles?)

Where do I get the installers?

You can download these tools from the Adobe Downloads page, the DPS Dashboard, or the Installing digital publishing tools help topic.

How do I know which installers I used?

Here’s how to tell which tools are installed and which tools were used to create a folio.

To see which tools are installed, open the Folio Builder panel and choose “About” from the panel menu. Look at the last numbers. For example, 7.0.5.17 means you’re using the v17 tools.

To see which viewer version you’re using, open the folio in the viewer and tap the title. The first two numbers indicate the viewer version. For example, 2.2.0.13.34603 refers to the 2.2 version of the viewer.

Unfortunately, the viewer version doesn’t match the Folio Producer tools. Here’s how they match up:

v12 (tools) = 1.7 (viewer)
v13 = 1.8
v14 = 1.9
v15 = 2.0
v16 = 2.1 (not available for iPad)
v17 = 2.2

Questions? Leave a comment, or go to the DPS forum.

Lots of good stuff this month in the world of digital publishing.

Updated Digital Publishing Gallery

The old gallery was fine until there were too many apps to navigate through easily. The new Digital Publishing Gallery lets you filter the apps by platform, date, language, or region. And you can search for the app you’re looking for.

DPS Update through a Connect session

Zeke Koch hosted a Connect session in which he shared the latest Digital Publishing Suite updates, answer burning questions and provide sneak peeks into the next stage of the product roadmap.

Rufus Deuchler’s Interactivity Videos

Rufus created a two-part video series about creating interactive overlays. It’s a good way to learn the basics if you’re new to digital publishing.

Video Part I – Hyperlinks, Buttons, and Slideshows

Video Part II – Panoramas, Web Content, Scrollable Frames, Pan & Zoom

Rufus also wrote an interesting article about creating panorama overlays for mobile devices.

DPS App Spotlight

Keith Gilbert is running a series on his blog in which he spotlights interest app published with the Digital Publishing Suite. Here are a couple of examples:

U of Dayton Viewbook

What’s cool about it
In iTunes

National Geographic Magazine

What’s cool about it
In iTunes

Mind Twister Article – Single Orientation Issue with a Twist

Johannes Henseler is always pushing boundaries. Here, he created an interesting effect in which he combined a couple of obscure features to create a folio in which you swipe down to get to the next article. Check out the video.

New Issues in DPS Tips

The DPS Tips app now has a third issue to go along with Folio Basics and Overlays. The Single Edition issue steps through the end-to-end process to creating, publishing, and submitting a single-issue viewer app that can appear in the App Store.

Soon, I’ll add a fourth issue — Effects — that covers more advanced digital publishing techniques such as PDF articles, single-orientation folios, smooth scrolling articles, and various HTML practices. When you see the little red badge next to the DPS Tips app, download the new folio.

I’ve also update the existing folios to include the newest enhancements to the tools.

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Did I miss anyone’s article, video, or app? Leave a comment, and let me know what’s good.

DPS Video Tutorials

First, let’s start with a batch of free DPS videos that Colin Fleming created for Video2Brain:

DPS Workflow: The Big Picture

DPS Tools, Subscriptions, and Services

Working with Styles and Layers

Horizontal Swipe Layouts

Hyperlink Actions

Colin has spent a lot of time in front of the camera. Here are some other videos posted recently on Adobe TV:

Viewer Builder

Loading HTML Articles

Sharing Folios

Smooth-Scrolling Layouts

Rufus Deuchler also created a video on using MUSE to create HTML content for DPS

DPS Articles

Here are some useful articles which I linked to in the appropriate help topics. Special thanks to Keith Gilbert and Johannes Henseler in particular for creating great content.

Advanced Scrollable Frames – Johannes shows a cool fadeout he created in his DONE magazine app, which was selected for a MAX award. Johannes also wrote a basic article about creating scrollable frames.

Image resolution for iPad publishing (indesignsecrets.com) – What’s the best image resolution to use for digital publishing? Short answer: 72 ppi.

Change the Order of Articles Using sidecar.xml Generator (Johannes Henseler) – Johannes created a utility that generates a sidecar.xml file.

iPad layout Templates for DPS (Gilbert Consulting) – Download horizontal and vertical templates.

Sharing folios with Adobe DPS (Keith Gilbert) – Keith walks you through the steps of sharing folios with individuals, allowing anyone with a mobile device to view your content. Creating and sharing folios in this manner is free.

Creating Super Overlays (Johannes Henseler) – A background image cannot appear in front of an overlay, but an overlay can appear in front of an overlay. Johannes goes over a few ways to create super overlays to mask interactive content.

Photoshop Extended for DPS (Keith Gilbert) – Keith goes over the ways in which Photoshop Extended helps him create digital publications.

Photoshop Template for App Store and Market Icons (Johannes Henseler) – When you submit a custom viewer app to Apple or Google, a number of icons are required. Johannes creates a template that makes it easy to kick out your icons using the various sizes.

Hiding the Scrollbar of a Scrollable Frame (Johannes Henseler) – When you create a scrollable frame, a scrollbar appears when the customer begins scrolling. But you don’t always want the scrollbar to appear. Johannes provides a workaround to hide the scrollbar.

Did I miss anything? Let me know in comments, and I’ll add a link.

You may already be aware of the Digital Publishing Suite Tips app I published for the iPad. If you’re using Adobe’s tools for digital publishing, you’ll want to download a copy of that app on your iPad. It’s like a cookbook, a blog, and a user guide all rolled into one app. Use it to see what you can do with digital publishing and how you can do it.

For those of you who are publishing content for Android devices such as the Motorola Xoom and Samsung Galaxy (and whatever Amazon has in the works), I created a version of the DPS Tips app. The easiest way to get it is to open the Android Market app on your device, search for “DPS Tips,” and download it.

The Android version includes much of the same content that appears in the iPad app. The app includes two folio renditions — 1024×600 for devices such as the Samsung Galaxy 7″ and 1232×752 for larger devices such as the Xoom and the Galaxy 10.1″. (I used 1232×752 instead of 1280×800 to account for the 48-pixel nav bar that cuts into the view area.) If you have an Android with any other dimensions, the folios will be scaled and letterboxed as needed.

The DPS Tips app is also available for the BlackBerry PlayBook, which displays the same 1024×600 folio rendition that appears in the smaller Android devices. Open App World, search for “DPS Tips,” and download.

When you’re using InDesign to create digital publishing apps for mobile devices, you can add all kinds of interactive effects, including panoramas. A panorama overlay can give you the impression that you’re inside a building or cockpit, allowing you to spin around and zoom in and out.

Unfortunately, creating the source files for panoramas is not easy. A panorama overlay requires six images that represent the inside of a cube.

You can use Photoshop to create a 3D panorama image. However, converting a 3D panorama image into the six images requires a third-party tool such as Pano2VR. Here’s how to use Pano2VR to convert a 3D panorama image into the six images required by the Overlay Creator.

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The interactivity features in InDesign were originally designed to work with SWF and PDF formats. When using DPS tools, some of these interactivity features are fully supported, some are partially supported, and some are not supported at all. The Buttons feature is partially supported in DPS. One limitation makes it difficult to create button hot spots: the Show/Hide Buttons action is not supported.

Fortunately, there’s a workaround. The key is to create a multi-state object (MSO) that includes both the hot spot image on the base state and the “close button” image on the target state, but no object in the MSO can be interactive. Once you create the MSO, you place invisible interactive buttons on top of the MSO These buttons switch states. Here’s a quick video of the button effect shown in the Desktop Viewer:

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If you need to use the same text in two InDesign documents, it can be a hassle to keep the changes consistent. If you find a typo or need to add a paragraph, you have to make the change in two different places. To simplify editing, you can use the InCopy export options–and you don’t need to have InCopy to get this to work.

Being able to share text between two documents is especially important when you’re publishing to mobile devices. If you’re using the Digital Publishing Suite to create magazines for the iPad, you can create separate horizontal and vertical documents so that a different layout of the same content appears when the iPad is rotated.

Quick Summary: Export a linked InCopy (.icml) file from one file, and place it in the other file. When you want to edit the linked text, check out the linked story in one document, save the changes, check it in, and then update the other document.

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The set of tools you use alongside InDesign CS5 to create digital magazines for the iPad and other mobile devices is called the Digital Publishing Suite. While you can use InDesign CS5 to create eBooks and interactive PDF and SWF files, the Digital Publishing Suite requires additional steps and applications to make your digital content commercially available on mobile devices.

Design, bundle, and view.

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Writing about the new Digital Publishing Suite has been keeping me so busy that I haven’t been updating this blog with juicy InDesign tips. If you’re interested in creating books or magazines for the iPad or other devices, go to the Adobe Labs site. You can download the necessary tools, as well as the user guide and the tutorial assets. To see what kinds of questions people are asking, go to the user forum.

If you’re interested in submitting an app you create to the Apple Store, you’ll want to join the prerelease site. Go to the Adobe prerelease page and choose Digital Magazine Publishing for product. The tools on the prerelease site are updated more frequently than on the Labs site. Also, the prerelease Downloads site includes a document called “iPad Publishing Process Overview.pdf” that helps you get started with the submission process.

If you have an iPad, check out some of these apps that were created using early versions of the Digital Publishing Suite tools.

InDesign Magazine Viewer (Free)

Mobile touch devices can provide a reading experience that’s better in some ways than websites or printed magazines. But the apps have to be done correctly. The “Take Color for a Spin” article in this issue takes advantage of this new format. Unfortunately, some of the other articles use a basic, flat structure when slideshows, videos, and other interactive designs would have improved the viewing experience. Then again, it’s free. Let’s hope future versions of this great magazine take better advantage of the format. (Download in iTunes)

Martha Stewart Living – Boundless Beauty ($3.99)

Martha made a guest appearance at the Adobe Max conference, and an Adobe bigwig named Kevin Lynch just returned the favor and entered Martha’s kitchen.

I bought this issue, but I haven’t been able to critique it yet because my wife has taken possession of my iPad. I may have more to say if I can get my iPad back. (Download in iTunes)

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