Every article in your publication will be a single InDesign document. You can create documents consisting of one or more pages, or alternatively you can create long pages of any length.
Multi-page articles
- Any article can consist of one or more "pages", and you'll be able to navigate from one to the other on the iPad via vertical swiping.
- Horizontal swiping from within any page of an article will always navigate to the first page of the next article.
- If you check the publication option 'Horizontal swiping only', then all pages from the different documents can only be navigated horizontally, independent of how you organized them in InDesign.
Long-page articles
You can also opt to have a page with the correct width, but with a length of your choosing, similar to a web page. That way, instead of navigating vertically from page to page, a user can continuously scroll through a longer document.
IMPORTANT NOTE:
If you work with 'long pages', you are limited to one page per article.
Creating articles
Select "New article" from the Twixl Publisher palette (if you are using a publication-based workflow, a new InDesign document will be added to the book file).
IMPORTANT NOTE:
While it is always recommended to use the Twixl Publisher plug-in panel to create new articles, sometimes you may have legacy content that you want to re-use. In that case, make sure to check out the article "Page sizes".
New Article
Select one of the included templates to start your design.
- The "File name" will be used to name your InDesign document.
- The "Title" is an optional title that will be displayed in the thumbnail viewer or in the Table of Contents overview.
- The "Tag Line" is an optional extra line of information that will be displayed in the Table of Contents overview below the Title.
- The "Author" is exactly that.
- Article Options: "Show article in TOC": allows you to select whether the thumbnail for this article will be visible in the Table of Contents overview.
- If you are using a book, articles can be reordered to change the order in which they will appear on the tablet. If you want to change the properties for your article afterwards, select "Article Properties" from the Twixl Publisher palette.
Working with templates
"Templates…": You can create templates for your designs. Twixl Publisher templates should be saved as InDesign template files (.indt) and should be stored at one of the following locations:
~/Library/Application Support/Twixl Publisher Plugin/Templates/ (user level)
(navigate to this folder using the "Templates" button in the "New Article" window)
/Library/Application Support/Twixl Publisher Plugin/Templates/ (root level)
A number of alternate layout templates will automatically be installed. The alternate layouts used in the templates use a specific naming convention. Check the "Working with alternate layouts" section for more details.
About standard and retina resolutions
There is nothing to configure in order to support standard resolution iPads as well as retina iPads. The plug-in automatically and transparently generates the artwork for the retina iPad in addition to the artwork for the standard resolution iPads. You just create your design at 768x1024 (portrait) and 1024 x 768 pixels (landscape), but the only requirement is that in order to obtain the optimal resolution for retina iPads as well, your images should have an effective ppi of 144 (you can check this in the link info panel).
If you are creating content for phones, note that you should have an effective ppi of 280 in order to obtain the optimal output quality. The Twixl Publisher preflight process will generate a warning if your images have a lower resolution.