Interactive PDFs on iPad?

[alexcutter66]

Hi all,

First of all, I'm trying to avoid having to use Flash.

That being said, do the various interactive elements I can add to an InDesign file (including embedded video) work within the iPad ecosystem when exported as an Interactive PDF?

For example, will buttons/links respond to a "touch" rather than a mouse-click?

Thanks!

ac

[BobLevine]

SWF files won't work. You'll need MP4 with .h264 encoding. Audio needs to be MP3.

Best advice I can give you is to experiment with a few things since there is no Adobe Reader for the iPad it's going to depend on third party apps to view the PDFs.

Bob

[alexcutter66]

Thanks for the reply Bob!

Doesn't CS 5.5 offer a way to convert SWF to an iPad compatible format?

Could I create a presentation in InDesign, export to SWF, and then convert the resulting file to something iPad compatible?

Thanks again.

[Steve Werner]

No. At the moment, these are two different routes from InDesign. There's not yet a magical SWF to iPad converter. But things are moving fast....

[vivrainbow]

Hi Guys, I am most interested in this issue. My company publishes ebooks in interactive pdf format with embedded video, created in InDesign5. I cannot believe that there is no Adobe Reader for the ipad. I am so disappointed in Adobe. I used to rely on them to keep me up to date, but now it seems they are way behind their customers. I don't want to go down the epub/ibooks route because Apple take an enormous percentage of the income, but it looks like that's what I will have to do.

[BobLevine]

Why are you disappointed in Adobe? Why should they create a crippled version of Adobe Reader?

Interactive PDFs support Flash. The iPad doesn't. You'll need to use one of the other third party PDF readers out there.

Bob

[vivrainbow]

I don't understand 'crippled' - how is this emotive language relevant? And I am not using flash - the video and sound files embedded in my interactive pdfs are mp3 and mp4 files.

We publish ebooks in interactive pdf format. I chose pdf because we thought it made my ebooks universally readable. I am disappointed in Adobe because that is no longer true if iPads cannot read interactive pdfs.

How can Adobe afford to ignore 75million or so iPad users and alienate their longstanding customers? InDesign became the industry standard in publishing because Quark became complacent. No-one at Quark thought the whole industry could afford or want to change from Quark, but InDesign was so good that everyone did. Adobe should remember that lesson.

[BobLevine]

What's wrong with the other PDF readers out there? You make it sound like there's no way to open a PDF on the iPad.

Bob

[Richard Ogilvy Action]

Bob,

Flash can be supported on the iPad if it is embedded in an Air app, so it shouldn't be too much of a stretch to support interactive PDF's. Also, just done a quick comparison of some of the available readers for interactive support, basic stuff like hyperlink support and Adobe came out near the bottom.

Regards,

Rich

[BobLevine]

True enough, but it's not worth the bother and everything I've seen of it looks choppy.

And in light of the recent killing of the Flash Mobile platform, I would certainly steer clear of it.

Bob

[Richard Ogilvy Action]

Native app development is different to flash embedded websites, which is what Adobe is no longer supporting, not the native apps. Otherwise they would be jeopardise their enterprise platforms, Connect and DEP, which use same approach to deliver content. So, I'm sure you are not suggesting we avoid those too?

Also there is the new IOS OS hooks for Air 3, so obviously Adobe still feel its a platform worth investing in.

But I do agree, there are some poorly executed examples, but then Flash Builder 4.5 was intended to address some of these performance issues.

[Petteri_Paananen]

This solution may interest you as well:

http://digitalpublishing.tumblr.com/post/12471155153/webapps-with-indesign-edocker-tablet-publisher

It has not been released yet, but it´s a matter of days now....

[rob day]

Adobe announced that they will no longer upgrade the Flash Player plugins for mobile web browsers after the just released version 11, which is very different than killing the Flash mobile platform. No one was building Flash websites targeted exclusively for mobile browsers anyway, so nothing has really changed. There are plenty of developers coding in Flash targeted for Android and iOS apps, and desktop browsers—most notably Angry Birds:

http://www.leebrimelow.com/?p=3065

[BobLevine]

You’re right…poor choice of words on my part.

Bob

[Jeffrey_Smith]

Here is Wired's spin on the situation.

[rob day]

Flash killing is always good sport and Adobe really botched this by blogging the announcement, but you would think they just magically disabled all the world's plugins. Player 11 includes stage3D, which has the new gaming GPU-accelerated APIs so current Android devices will have a powerful plugin installed for the next few years. They also made it clear that they need to put all their resources into version 12 and AIR, which I think most developers are happy about.

[Lohrsjg]

Might want to check out Mag+. Their tools are free and their publishing platform is reasonably priced.

It is a plugin for InDesign and I hate to say but much easier to use than Adobe's DPS tools. You can create some pretty cool stuff incorporating video, audio, html, etc. Goes way beyond interactive pdf's and ebooks.

Don't mean to sound like an ad for them but they have a great product that works nicely with Adobe products and the Mag+ foks are really great guys.

Check out Installation Magazine from the app store, created using InDesign with Mag+ tools!

Jody

[macinbytes]

http://woodwing.com/en/tablet-publishing-overview

Woodwing is another solution. Either way you are going to have to pay the piper somewhere in the form of 5-6 digits to WoodWing or Adobe upfront or 30% to Apple for your sales through that channel. Apple gives essentially free exposure and a decent buyer experience that lends well to small purchases such as music, movies or books.

I think it is unfair to criticize Adobe too much on the iPad issue. CS5 and the iPad essentially shipped at the same time, so any hope for CS5 to work iPad magic is out of the question. They put out the 5.5 release to help out with the new wave of products, but it is still very much a moving target. Between having flash solutions for iPad apps get pulled and then later allowed again it isn't as though Adobe has it easy. I'd say they are doing as well as they can aside from little issues that are expected for something that is being rushed into a moving market.

Also, Adobe isn't some huge company that can just throw tons of might at one device and even then a small portion of that device. They have dozens of products out for various different aspects of the industry. InDesign is predominately geared to the print industry anyway. Print is about an 75 billion dollar a year industry, whereas ebooks are just starting to crest half a billion a year industry. It's not as though they can put their full thrust at ebooks. They have video, interactive content, web, collaboration and print all ahead of ebooks.

You can't expect Adobe to have a great end to end solution for something so new and have it rolled into something low cost such as the creative suite? Getting flash games easily over to they iPad could be a higher priority considering Angry Birds alone generates about half the revenue of the entire ebook industry.

[BobLevine · Accepted solution]

You're thinking about the Digital Publishing Suite and that has nothing to do with converting SWF to anything useable on the iPad. You can convert SWF to HTML5 with Wallaby. http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/wallaby/

Bob

[alexcutter66]

Thanks Bob and Steve!

[myDwayneSmith]

Hi Bob

You said "You can convert SWF to HTML5 with Wallaby."

Could you please tell me how, I can't work it out.

I can only see how to convert fla files.

Many thanks

d.

[Peter Spier]

Bob will be away from the forums for a bit, so please be patient.

[MBochiaro]

Hi Bob and Steve,

How would the creative Cloud come into play here? Would Edge act as a tool that would allow to convert PDF to HML5 on the iPad?  What I am trying to accomplish is, if we create an interactive PDF in InDesign that contain embedded videa, is there a way to play them on the iPad?

I noticed that Creative Cloud has a concept to create, edit and publich on the iPad, but does that only pertain to the Touch Apps available and the ones that will be available? I dont see one for Acrobat, so we cant view the PDFs on the iPad with an Adobe app.  Will the app that allows to view video be Edge or will there be any others?

Sorry for all the questions, I want to get a better understanding on this.

Thanks!!!

[BobLevine]

Edge is a terrific application but it will have no effect on the use of PDF.

What you're probably thinking about is Digital Publishing Suite. Sometime in the next few weeks. Single Edition apps, currently $395 each, will be added to Creative Cloud at no additional cost.

That means one app would cost you more than an entire year of Creative Cloud.

Bob

[vivrainbow]

I've had a look at Creative Cloud. One big thing that bothers me is that after a year the price reverts to 'standard charge' which would not be cost effective to me, and there are no guarantees on where this price could or could not go.

And if I leave the Cloud it seems that all the money I have spent is wasted because I can no longer access any of the applications, even though I will have paid more than the cost of buying some of them outright.

So this is apparently tying the customer into an open-ended charge because they would lose all their money if they left???

Doesn't seem like a very special offer to me.

Vivienne