EPUB Help please

Report · Sep 30, 2021

My teacher wants us to make an EPUB for this Branding guide we had to create for class a while back. He never clearly said if we have to make a Reflowable EPUB or a Fixed one. He kind of left it up to us but said it had to be responsive and the text needed to flow which sounds like a Reflowable EPUB to me. Anyway, I have been trying to make this document interactive with a Table of Contents and previewing it by exporting it into Adobe Digital Editions which is such a pain in the butt. I noticed that besides everything coming out a complete mess, my pictures are not showing at all. I haven't anchored them yet. I also keep getting this message about errors but my document in InDesign shows no errors. Even my table of contents is a mess, everything is out of order. What am I doing wrong? I try watching tutorials but it's different because they are making a TOC from scratch. My brand guide was a template I bought that already had TOC made. I'm sending pictures below to show what it should look like and what I am getting from creating an EPUB as well as the error warnings I received. If someone could help I would appreciate it.

Report · Sep 30, 2021

All I can tell you is that in my opionion, based on the screenshots and the info you've supplied is that this project is totally unsuitable to reflowable epub.

Also, Adobe Digital Editions is a hot mess. For Mac/iPad use the Books app. For Windows, Thorium Reader.

Report · Sep 30, 2021

I followed a few LinkedIn learning tutorials the lady said Adobe Digital Edition was good for PC so I used it. Then again, she uses Mac and she made the tutorial in 2018. I hate to have to download something else after I already downloaded that one. Have you tired the Adobe one before? What is the difference between the two?

Report · Sep 30, 2021

That's one of the drawbacks of LinkedIn Learning: they keep selling out-of-date material because a) they don't have the knowledge to judge when something is out of date, b) they want it to appear that they have tons of releveant material for you to buy, c) being a corporation, they just want to make money any way they can, or d) all of the above.

Technology changes fast, and LIL doesn't keep up.

We do not depend on it for training in any genre.

Report · Oct 01, 2021

Three years is an eternity! Adobe should be embarrased to have their name on ADE. It's garbage, but that's not really the issue here. You're trying to use a layout that does not lend itself to this format.

Reflowable EPUB is best for text heavy documents such as novels.

While you might be able to pull this off, it's not something for a beginner. There is no way a teacher should have made this an assignment.

Report · Oct 01, 2021

I agree with Bob – it would be interesting if the student asked the "teacher" to show her his/her finished example!

Report · Oct 01, 2021

I was able to get hold of a fellow student who is in a section above me and they said they just made a interactive pdf for the assignment. I'm going to do the same. The reflowable EPUB is way too complicated and was not working for my template. Hopefully it turns out well. 🤞 Thanks for the help.

Report · Oct 01, 2021

Remember, interactivity in PDFs is limited now that Flash has been dropped.

Report · Oct 01, 2021

It's not showing my pictures now in the interactive preview. I don't know
why. It says the status is ok for my pictures and when I used InDesign at
school and tried the preview I could have sworn it showed my pictures. Why
is it not working on my home computer? I'm using the same InDesign version.

Report · Oct 01, 2021

What kind of interactivity have you included in your PDF?

Report · Oct 01, 2021

Pictures, some are jpg and some are png. None of my pictures are showing. I
noticed that when I go to the epub interactive preview it doesn't reload
when I start it. At school, it reloaded each time I played something. Could
it be an issue with the preview? My pictures show on my InDesign document
but not in the preview. [image: doc and preview.png]

Report · Oct 01, 2021

If there's no interactivity just save (Export) it as a PDF for print. When you click on the saved PDF icon, it will launch Acrobat (or another PDF viewer) and you can view the PDF.

Report · Oct 01, 2021

I need to make an interactive pdf though. I was going to add hyperlinks to
text and a slideshow for the pictures. The whole assignment is to make it
interactive. It can't be a regular pdf.

Report · Oct 01, 2021

As I mentioned, PDF interactivity, such as a slideshow, won't work. Try InDesign's Publish Online instead, you can include animations in that. It's not PDF, it's HTML5, but you can enable it so the user can download a (static) PDF version.

https://helpx.adobe.com/uk/indesign/using/publish-online.html

Report · Oct 01, 2021

@Lisa5D5E wrote:

I followed a few LinkedIn learning tutorials the lady said Adobe Digital Edition was good for PC so I used it.

Was "the lady" you followed on LinkedIn "Her Geekness" @AnneMarie Concepcion ?

~ Jane

Report · Sep 30, 2021

Sounds like the teacher wants a Reflowable ePub. It's not an intuitive format to produce (all text to have Paragraph and Character Styles, no page numbers, all images to be anchored and InDesign Master Pages not recognised). Also Digital Editions is not a particularly good ePub viewer, If you're on a Mac try the iBooks reader.

But a FXL ePub might be better if you have lots of images – but its not reflowable.

I suggest you take the online video course on LinkedIn Learning (you can get 30-days free access): https://www.linkedin.com/learning/indesign-cc-to-epub/ebook-vs-epub

Report · Sep 30, 2021

I actually have watched LinkedIn learning tutorials. In fact, I believe the one you sent me was one I watched. It didn't help. I followed it but I said before my Table Of contents came out all messed up. I made a paragraph style for the text like the lady said, went to TOC STYLE checked the anchor and if you see my pics you can see how it turned out. I did add hyperlinks to my table of contents so someone can click it to be taken to that chapter. I'm not sure if maybe adding a hyperlink could have messed it up???

Report · Sep 30, 2021

As I said, producing Reflowable ePubs is not intuitive - If you're really interested in doing this and you have the time, I suggest you make up a simple practice document and go over the tutorial again, carefully. Nothing has changed in InDesign over recent versions so the tutorial I mentioned should be up-to-date.

As a matter of interest, which version of InDesign and OS do you have?