How To Create a Fixed Layout eBook with Adobe InDesign CC

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In this episode of Adobe Creative Cloud TV I’ll show you how to create a Fixed Layout eBook (epub), with interactivity using Adobe InDesign CC.

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See more of my Adobe Creative Cloud Videos on my Adobe Creative Cloud TV and get the App below. It features EXCLUSIVE CONTENT that no one else gets to see. This episode has a BONUS CLIP that is available only in the App! My iOS App is a Universal App for iPhone, iPad and iPod touch. I also have an Android version on the Amazon App Store:

April 11, 2011April 11, 2011

Adobe CS5 Evolves: Digital Publishing from InDesign to Tablets Gets Better

Adobe InDesign CS 5.5 improves in the areas of Digital Publishing to devices. It addresses the number one request from our ePUB authors and that is the ability to embed video in your exported ePUBs and yes those videos play on the iPad (or any other ePUB 3.0 standards compatible device). We've also made some improvements on allowing you to layout your publications for print, but also dictate the order in which elements are exported to ePUB using the new Articles Panel. Another major improvement is the ability to either have InDesign generate your ePUB cover from the 1st page of your document or linking to a specific image that is optimized for a small size "bookshelf" on a device such as the iPad's iBooks App. Here's a video on how some of these features work:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bBNrMoKz0Q

What's new in Interactive Digital Publishing to Tablets?

The video below walks you through some of the enhancements to the Digital Publishing Suite in InDesign CS5.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4HR_LdlM31s

There's more new stuff in CS 5.5

See Greg Rewis' post on what's new in Dreamweaver CS5.5 for HTML 5 and Mobile Authoring here.

See Jason Levine's post on what's new in Production Premium CS5.5 here.

See Paul Trani's post on what's new in Flash Professional and Mobile App development here.

Learn more about Creative Suite 5.5 including a New Subscription pricing option for those that don't want to or need to "buy" Creative Suite Products here.

Also see more CS 5.5 videos on Adobe TV. In case you missed it, Adobe TV can now be viewed on your iPad.

Why is Adobe releasing a new version of Creative Suite so soon?

As you know Creative Suite apps have typically reved every 18-24 months. The world is moving faster than that and many of our publishing customers need solutions for publishing to new devices and in new formats sooner. Now you will see Adobe introduce a major milestone release ever 24 months and a mid-cycle release every 12 months. Johnny L is here to tell us all about it:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=niE9VT8Yjbo

Join us for a Live Q&A Today (4/11/2011)

We will be hosting a live Q&A Today (4/11/2011) on Facebook at 12:00 noon EDT (GMT -4). Join me and the other Adobe Creative Suite Evangelists, Jason Levine, Greg Rewis, Paul Trani for an hour to answer your Creative Suite questions.

Here's the link for the live Q&A

Join us on the CS5 Evolves Tour

I'm about to head off on the CS5 Evolution Tour with my Adobe Evangelist colleagues!

Details here.

Schedule:

Tour Locations

May 2: Gothenburg
May 3: Stockholm
May 4: Oslo
May 5: Prague
May 6: Helsinki
May 9: Copenhagen
May 11: London
May 11: Århus
May 19: Warsaw
May 23: Amsterdam
May 24: Kortrijk*
May 25: Moscow
May 27: Istanbul
May 31: Sydney
June 2: Melbourne
June 7: Paris
June 9: Barcelona**
June 14: Sao Paulo
June 17: Mexico City
June 17: Skellefteå

April 21, 2010October 2, 2013

Creating My 1st iBook for the iPad with Adobe InDesign CS5

These are exciting times in the publishing industry! The tools have never been better to get your word out. With the introduction of Adobe Creative Suite 5 and in particular InDesign CS5, my head is spinning thinking about all the possibilities. I can use one industry standard app to publish for Print, for the Web with NEW Interactive features and now more easily than ever to standard eBook Reader formats such as ePUB. There’s also a lot of excitement around the Apple iPad. The beauty here is that I can use my new found publishing power and Apple’s popular device to get my content in front of more eyeballs than ever.

The Project

As you may know I co-authored one of the best selling books for the iPhone, “The iPhone Book”. I’ve been very happy with the success of that book and of course as soon as the iPad was introduced, many eyes turned towards me to question if I was going to write a book for this new device. While the project seemed interesting (and still is), I wanted to try something a little different this time around. I wanted the iPad Book to be an iBook on the actual iPad. All of my books are already being laid out in Adobe InDesign. So there’s nothing new there, except there is something new there in terms of capabilities. The enhanced capabilities around the ePUB format and Interactive Document publishing beyond PDF. So I wanted to do two things: I wanted to get a sample out there of what an iPad book on the iPad and I wanted to experience first hand what it was like to create one from scratch using InDesign CS5. So I enlisted the help of my colleague at Adobe, Colin Fleming (eBOOK guru) and Colin gave me the inside scope and even some sample demo documents that he had put together. This was a great jump start and helped me avoid some stumbling blocks. Yesterday, I started my sample “25 iPad Tips” and today I have a FREE iBook that you can download right here.

The Making of my 1st iBook (ePUB)

The iBooks App on the iPad reads standard ePUB documents and Adobe InDesign CS5 just so happens to export them out directly. Great! There are some limitations that you have to be mindful in your document itself. These are limitations on the standard more so than of InDesign. For example, InDesign is an amazingly powerful page layout application that pretty much allows you do do anything you want on the page. However, ePUB has limitations on how the content has to flow to make it possible to have this single document on a multitude of different devices. I recorded this video to walk you through some of those things to look out for:

Downloading and Installing my FREE “25 iPad Tips” Book

The first step is to download my ePUB file here. Once you download the ZIP file, unzip it and you’ll have a short readme.txt file and the actual “25 iPad Tips.epub” document. Open iTunes 9.1 and higher and simply drag the ePUB into the Library area of iTunes on the left side. It should now appear in the Books Area of iTunes and once you plug in your iPad via the USB cable, you can select it as a book to sync in the Books Tab in iTunes. Enjoy!

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