Can software ever be perfect? Of course not. There will always be the desire for improvement and bug fixing.
Software tools that are most often never perfect are those that need to link up with each other across the vendor divide. We should not complain though. We should make the best of it, and do our best.
Apple have been generous in the latest version of iBooks Author by providing 2 ways that we can get out content from Adobe InDesign into the free 'multi-touch' authoring environment. But, neither of these 2 methods are perfect and we need to develop our skills of patience and perseverance in order to achieve our goals.
I can't promise that the old iWeb will stay for much longer, but I did get all of the data out and then used all of the features of weebly to re-build.
If you need to tweak the styles of your ebook created with the iPad in mind then you can (with a bit of magic) set up Dreamweaver as a useful wysiwy(almost)g tool.
Dreamweaver, is, of course a web development and design tool. It will normally handle (x)HTML without any change. It will also allow you to edit other code and even XML. It will not edit the contents of a ZIP file (this is what a normal ePub package is) unless it is unpacked.
The Adobe AIR application used to be a free download. It was useful because you could edit an ePUB file without needing to unpack it and re-zip it. I used it in my class to show how to edit XHTML and CSS.
Getting InDesign (CS5) to produce a decent ePUB format ebook is so problematic, that I sometimes wonder why we are bothering to use it at all! We could after all, use tools to build the components of the ePUB package by hand coding. Dreamweaver is a possibility and Sigil may also be a way to go.
However, one strategy may be to use InDesign as a starting point and then accept that we need to edit the resultant XHTML and CSS. This is the method that I am using, and I am promoting this method with my students.
After a few frustrating sessions recently, I thought I would note down a list of problems that can be solved. This may not be a comprehensive list...
CSS3 provides some neat effects, like rounded corners and shadows, but InternetExplorer (before version 9) just ignores these CSS rules.
Is there a way to get Internet Explorer to conform?
Hopefully you are seeing the rounded corners and shadows, even if you are using Internet Explorer, because Jason Johnston has provided a solution and you can find out all about it on his web site: css3pie
I was hoping to be able to report that adding video to a web page with the new <video> tag brought to us by HTML5, would make life a lot easier. Not yet, it ain't!
I have spent a good deal of time trying to resolve a number of issues.
To a certain extent some of the problems, are my own, since I have legacy material in Quicktime .mov format, and I was reluctant to go back and convert. However, a splendid batch process has resolved this for me...