The big one

As I made clear from my previous blog post about the conference last year, PePcon is something to look forward to. I’m into print and digital publishing workflows, design products and other Adobe solutions. But time and budget restrictions (that thing we all have) only allows me to attend a certain number of conferences a year. Especially when they’re overseas, like in the U.S. This means I need to plan my schedule and budget every year to make sure I spend these two resources as best as I can. And PePcon has been on the top of the list ever since I attended the very first time in San Francisco in 2012.

Other conferences I’m looking forward to this year are the InDesign Conference and Adobe MAX, though I can’t confirm yet if I’ll be able to make it to those. As I explained in a previous blog post, my objectives for visiting conferences are:

1. Sessions: my primary focus is of course learning and attending sessions. So I need to be sure that I’ll pick up tips, new programs, or a new (or updated) sense of direction.
2. Organisation: because I’m personally involved with organising small events in Belgium I think attending sessions overseas gives me a great learning platform because I get to be an attendee myself. So the personal experience I get as an attendee helps me to get things organised for my own sessions and events. The things I pick up could be about how I enrolled, how communication is done, their social media policy, surveys, catering, support, etc.
3. Speakers and keynotes: because I regularly spend time in a classroom environment or on stage as a speaker I constantly pick up tips on improving my own presentations, my slides, technical setup and even get to observe how people improvise, answer questions, introduce themselves or (try to) be funny.
4. Networking: the previous bullets in this list are pretty straightforward and most people just go with the flow. But networking is different and I do believe that the word “work” in “networking” is a true fact. And it sometimes takes some courage to let yourself be heard during a session or just step up to someone out of the blue. But I’ve learned that growing your network and socialising with specialists, Adobe staff and like-minded people is key to growing your own business and staying at the top of your game.

… and PePcon ticks all the boxes!

Me and co-presenter Erica Gamet during a GREP presentation at PePcon ’14 in Chicago. Photo courtesy of PePcon.com

My PePcon 2015

This year I’ll be presenting the “DPS Fundamentals: Building Folios for Digital Publications” session, just like I did in Austin in 2013. This is a half day session that focuses on Adobe’s Digital Publishing Suite solution, and will take place on 1st June. This is one of the so called pre-conference sessions where you get to learn more about a specific topic, and will have the chance to meet other people that share your interest.

Photo courtesy of Padi.com

During this session I’ll explain all the ins and outs about building digital publications using the DPS solution. This means we’ll focus on the Adobe DPS workflow and creation of interactive documents using Adobe InDesign and other CC programs to further enrich your documents. A few of the bullet points I’ll be discussing are:

• Getting started
• Building your first folio
• Converting a print documenten to digital publication
• Design tips
• How to set up a DPS workflow with your client
• Things to be careful for
• Previewing content
• Integrating audio, video, and animation into your layouts
• Engaging the reader with interactivity such as buttons, multi-state objects, and scrollable frames
• Dealing with Apple
• …

If you’re interested in this session, be sure to book a seat while they’re still available! All information, registration and full conference schedule is available on the official PePcon website.

Hope to see you all there, and never hesitate to come and say hi during the conference!

The post Speaking at PePcon 2015 in Philadelphia appeared first on Bart Van de Wiele.

The concept is pretty simple, they asked me to answer 4 simple questions about this change and Adobe DPS in general. You can find my answers (and those of industry expert Branislav Milic) to these questions by reading the article here.

The post Enterprise Adoption.com opinion piece on Adobe DPS appeared first on Bart Van de Wiele.

Starting May 1, 2015, Adobe will no longer support Adobe DPS Single Edition apps via Adobe.com or through your Creative Cloud license. And on December 4, 2014, Adobe will also remove DPS Single Edition as a purchasable product from Adobe.com. To most people this change will come as a surprise, especially since there’s been more competition than ever from third-party solutions for creating apps from Adobe InDesign. Adobe DPS Single Edition (SE) has always been a great selling point for Creative Cloud licenses and seeing it disappear soon is inevitably going to lead to disappointment with clients and designers. After all it has been available since 2011. It was a way for small design firms or freelancers to create and build apps for clients and expand their range of services as an agency. The demand for digital publications has only increased over the last year and I think DPS SE was a great way for people to get into DPS, or digital publishing in general, for the first time.

ePub vs Single Edition

Today, more people are discovering the ePUB format, a format that DPS SE was not intended to support. And with the new InDesign CC 2014 update it is now possible to export your design to a Fixed Layout ePUB file (ePub3), which keeps your layout intact upon export. And once exported you can publish and sell this publication in the iBookstore. Adobe has discovered that many organisations who do wish to use a fully interactive app for their business are usually looking to develop enterprise-class apps, for which you can still get the DPS Pro and Enterprise versions of DPS. DPS SE was too limited offering only one publication per app, no push notifications, no analytics and limited support on other devices (like iPhone or Android).

I don’t live in the U.S. and the market and size of organisations in my tiny Belgian country is significantly smaller than what you’d probably have in larger countries, even throughout Europe. I’ve been working with so many clients over the last few years providing training, consulting and supporting sales teams to offer the best publishing solutions (print and digital) possible. But in all those years I’ve hardly had any demand or request for ePUB type documents. For them DPS SE was a blessing, but building the actual app was a challenge to some designers. They weren’t used to the administrative and technical requirements that building an iOS or Android app needed. So I am glad that the ePub3 format offers an easy solution to this problem. Plus the fact that native features like InDesign animations, multi-state objects and Edge Animate projects are supported only adds to the ease of use for the Fixed Layout ePub format. But unfortunately there are 2 main concerns with the ePub format from InDesign:

• No default viewer for all devices: If you have a recent Mac or are running iOS8 on your iPad then you’ll find iBooks pre-installed on your device. And you can open up ePub files using iBooks, making it very easy to read and open ePub documents. But Windows devices (both mobile and desktop) and also Android mobile devices don’t have a default ePub reader available. And this bottleneck stops many people from just putting an ePub file on their website as a download. Fortunately this isn’t always a deal breaker as many companies like to use the ePub format for internal use like as sales documents or interactive presentations.
• Lack of commercial back-end system: When you publish your ePub on the iBookstore you can offer it as a free download or as a single purchase. There is no support for more advanced features like subscriptions, direct entitlement, push notifications, analytics or other options. And because of this it’s not a suitable file format for professional publishers because it’s very hard to monetise your publications when you’re publishing periodicals. And remember that digital publishing is becoming more and more a marketing solution than a pure design solution. What’s the point if it doesn’t make you money in the long run?

What now?

I think the support for a fixed layout ePUB3 format is a huge leap forward and will definitely create opportunities for many people. Unfortunately Adobe chose to trade Adobe DPS SE for this new ePUB3 format. Personally I would love to have seen the ePUB3 option being added to Adobe InDesign without having to give up other great solutions. It’s not as if SE wasn’t working properly or there wasn’t any demand for it. And the fact you can still create SE apps using your Pro or Enterprise license means that Adobe is still convinced that SE apps still serve some purpose. Taking away a publishing method from current users means they’ll have to orientate themselves towards an alternative. This alternative might be the new ePUB3 format, a DPS Pro/Enterprise license but might also be a “Single Edition” solution from a third-party developer like Twixl Publisher or others. And I think the latter might happen because there is still a large group of designers out there that need the full interactivity of an app and aren’t afraid to jump through the Apple and Android hoops to put it on the app store. And what about users who already have a live app on the store? If you already have SE apps on the app store Adobe will allow you to update these existing apps until May 1, 2015. But after that date you will no longer be able to use the SE solution to update your app. This means that if you still want to continue with a different apps solution you’ll have to migrate your Folios and republish your content using a different solutions provider and update your existing SE app using this alternative solution. The alternative would be to switch your business over to a Pro or Enterprise license. But don’t forget you now need a DPS Pro license for every DPS client you have (if you’re working as an agency). So companies who e.g. have 5 apps online via SE might have to make a large investment in DPS Pro licenses, unless another third-party solution offers them a better deal.

To finish off

I’ve always been a big fan of digital publishing solutions and I’ve always loved the way Adobe DPS works. Today I train and support it and still try to help as many people as I can with it. So for me personally it’s a pity that I won’t be able to continue with my usual business. Because that’s what it was to me, business. As an Adobe trainer working for an Adobe software reselling company you can imagine this announcement will change a lot for me. I do believe that Adobe has major insights into the current publishing market and their decisions are not taken overnight. But I hope they’ll think more about the “little guys” in the industry who do need a SE solution for their business. Yes they’re small, but they’re with many. And I’m very thankful for the new ePUB3 which has really caught my eye. And then again, maybe this is exactly what the market needs? But what is sure is that the search for a standardised digital publishing solution is far from over. And maybe this is just the next step to an open source HTML publishing solution?

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My latest article on CreativePro shows you how to set up your project in Adobe Muse and proves that this new option allows you to use HD graphics for your projects on retina display devices.

Read the full article here.

The post Adobe Muse HD graphics for Adobe DPS: new article appeared first on Bart Van de Wiele.

These tips go beyond the basics and are based on my product experience and troubleshooting so I hope you get to enjoy them. Remember you can get a subscription here.

The post InDesign Magazine #61: Adobe DPS power tips appeared first on Bart Van de Wiele.

I’ll be hosting the next Adobe Users Group meeting in Sydney on 8th may in the Adobe office. During this 2hr session I’ll be talking about how you can build and publish your iPad app to the App Store using the DPS Single Edition solution. Remember, your Creative Cloud licence entitles you to create as many single-publication apps as you want.

If you want to attend my session, or just check out the agenda be sure to visit this link.

See you there!

The post I’m speaking at Sydney Adobe Users Group meeting appeared first on Bart Van de Wiele.

Feel free to share and comment. Thanks for watching.

The post New Adobe DPS video tutorial: creating an automatic number sequence appeared first on Bart Van de Wiele.

But unfortunately we’re still not living in a perfect world where it’s no longer necessary to safely remove a USB drive, Comic Sans isn’t installed by default or where you’re not online all the time. And it’s for that last scenario that we want to be careful  when automatically trying to stream video. Because we want to control what the users sees during his reading experience. The following workflow will show you how you can hold off from automatically streaming by not using the “Auto Play” function and using a custom poster.

Step1: getting the video into InDesign

Embedding a YouTube video (or video from other streaming services) has become so easy ever since CS6 came out. Follow these steps to set you on your way:

1. Go to YouTube.com and choose your favourite video clip (preferably something with cats).
   
2. Click the Share tab
   . 
3. Click the Embed tab.
4. Complete the embed code by adding “http:” or “https:” (both without quotes) to the embedded url.
5. Choose the appropriate video size form the available options.
6. Make sure “Use old embed code” is deselected.

Now copy the code and switch back to InDesign. Now hit the Paste command and give InDesign a few seconds to think. Et voilà, there’s your YouTube video as a Web Content Overlay in the Folio Overlays panel. But wait, what’s up with that poster image?

What’s happening is that some of the HTML is loading into InDesign, resulting in a type of error message saying that the program you’re currently using (InDesign) is not suited for video playback. The video would still start the moment you tap this poster image on the iPad but it’s just so horrible to look at. Even when you have the item on Autoplay would you still see the poster image while loading in the video. So imagine being offline and seeing that poster image in your design the whole time?

Step2: changing the poster image

Let’s go back to the basics here and ask ourselves, “what is a poster image?”. A poster image is a custom image that represents certain interactive content (e.g. a video clip) and is inviting us to interact with that content. This means that the poster image is what “sells” the object and should persuade the user to start interacting with it.
I personally don’t automatically load in the HTML of a video stream service, meaning I don’t click the “Auto Play” option in the Web Content options. This is because I want to avoid the mobile device to look for a signal to start loading in HTML while you might actually be offline. This can only result in delays and potential “Error Loading Content” messages.

Follow these steps to help you personalise the experience:

After having pasted in the HTML, move the frame into position in your layout.

1. Set all the settings you have to set in the Web Content options of the Folio Overlays panel, but don’t select the “Auto Play” feature.

    

2. Now create an extra graphic that holds some text or an icon that says something along the lines of “Are you online? Then click here to watch this crazy cat video!”. You can prepare a Photoshop graphic for this, or even use native InDesign objects to build this graphic. This will act as your poster image.
3. Move the poster image on top of the HTML frame to cover it up.

What will happen next

You might be familiar with the hierarchy of objects within a folio i.e. static objects are pushed to the back while interactive objects get promoted to the top of the stack. So does this mean your poster image will be pushed to the back once you generate a preview? InDesign considers Web Content that isn’t activated yet as static content, meaning that the poster image will remain in the foreground. When you tap the poster image (to start the HTML and thus load in the YouTube stream) you’re actually tapping the Web Content frame in the background. And the moment the HTML is loaded in it becomes interactive and gets promoted to the foreground. Pretty simple huh?

The post Custom poster image for YouTube videos with Adobe DPS appeared first on Bart Van de Wiele.

The app product page on the App Store requires a lot of information.

The problem here is that the client usually owns the apple developer account but just doesn’t know how to use it. That is why, in practice, the DPS designer (or agency) usually publishes the app for the client, using the client’s Apple account. But that means that the client needs to supply that information to the designer in some way (taking certain mandatory and character limited fields into account).

The post Interactive App Store submission PDF appeared first on Bart Van de Wiele.

Read the full article here.

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