ScreenCasts

InDesign

Ambient Sound in Fixed-layout eBook

Just for Apple iBooks

When we place audio on the page of a fixed-layout eBook, we cannot expect it to contiunue to play when the page is turned. Simply, each page is a new XHTML document, so audio (or any media) will stop on leaving that page.

If we want to get audio to continue to play as we turn the pages, we need to modify the markup inside the ePub package after we have exported from InDesign.

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Filed Under: InDesignMaking eBooks

Duration: 00:11:09

Edit the ePub after Export from InDesign

Once we have exported the reflowable ePub from InDesign we can edit the CSS. First we need to unpack the ePub file and use a text editor to edit the main CSS file.

The objective is to get out own version of the CSS file so that we can use this later when we re-export from InDesign.

This screencast uses Textwangler to edit the ePub. Look back through the screencasts and you can see how we can use Dreamweaver to do something very similar.

We edit the CS to add a background to a heading and remove the forced page break that is generating a blank page.

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Filed Under: CSS and HTMLInDesignMaking eBooks

Duration: 00:11:27

Web First Workflow System for Publishing

a work in progress

I am slowly working on a project to construct a publishing system that uses a web first interface to provide an editing environment which then leads to XML that can then be exported ready to be imported into a ready prepared InDesign template.

This screencast demonstrates the building of an international recipe book with contributions from various editors.

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Filed Under: InDesignMaking eBooksXML

Duration: 00:20:12

A Midsummer Night’s Dream - 4 Ways

We view 4 different versions of the Play on the iPad

Edit: Please note that Adobe's Digital Publishing Suite is NO longer an option since this has now been replaced by a different product.

Here is a big decision.

You want to turn Shakespeare's Play A Midsummer Night's Dream into a fancy digital product for the iPad (and other tablet devices possibly).

What are the choices?

Let's have a look at some different versions on the iPad.

I provide a table below the screencast with the various options explained.

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Filed Under: InDesignMaking eBooks

Duration: 00:15:16

From InDesign to iBooks Author

Episode 3 of an introduction to iBooks Author

There is no direct way to get your content out of InDesign and into iBooks Author.

[edit] Please note that as of iBooks Author 2.2 you can insert chapters from an IDML file that has been exported from InDesign

What we have to do is to make use of a number of scripts added to InDesign to break down a single document into separated files and then extract the text. Lucky for us, iBooks Author can build a chapter from a Microsoft Word document and will even respect the styles built in Indesign!

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Filed Under: InDesignMaking eBooksiBooks Author

Duration: 00:18:18

Building a Fixed-Layout ePub3 from InDesign (part 2)

We Use Dreamweaver to edit the ePub Package files

In the previous part, we added a master page header to to every page and used this to split the ePub.

Now we are unpacking the ePub and after creating a local Dreamweaver site, we edit the various files inside the ePub package.

Note that I am using a MAC with the latest OS (Mavericks) to do this work. This makes life easier since I can view the ePub file with Apple's iBooks app.

If you are working with a PC/Windows, then you can test the ePub with Readium within the Google Chrome browser.

Addendum: To make sure that the header (originally only on the master pages), will appear above the main text, make the header text box very wide so that it is the first item reading left to right. The articles will then put things in the correct order reading from top left.

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Filed Under: CSS and HTMLInDesignMaking eBooks

Duration: 00:25:10

Building a Fixed-Layout ePub3 from InDesign (part 1)

I am using InDesignCC 9.2

We start with a Shakespeare play (Midsummer Night's Dream) set up in InDesign with pages good for print and previously exported as a reflowable ePub3.  

We make use of master page items to split the document into separate HTML documents and use the Articles panel to order the content on export to ePub.

The next part of this screencast will cover editing the insides of the ePub package so that it will conform to the ePub3 Fixed-Layout format.

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Filed Under: InDesignMaking eBooks

Duration: 00:22:41

Edit the ePub after export from InDesign

Using Dreamweaver to edit the CSS

We have already exported from InDesign and have an ePub3 file to review. We can see the results in Adobe Digital Edition and iBooks for MAC.

Some things aren't what we expected! Let's use a script to unpack the ePub and make a site in Dreamweaver.

Now we can edit the CSS and roundtrip back to InDesign.

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Filed Under: CSS and HTMLInDesignMaking eBooks

Duration: 00:16:14

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