Digital Publishing Feature Suggestions - Interactivity

[Three]

I would love it if Affinity Publisher outputted all standard eBook formats and

allowed for interactivity in eBooks where supported by file type.

Interactive features would include:

• popups with texts
• animation
• sound files
• ability to turn features on or off within the book
• page jumps on choice 

Since Affinity is the future and interactive books are the future, seems a perfect match to me.

Right now, there are some add-on interactive features programs or software that are limited to very specific outputs;  Kotobee, iBooks Author, Aquafadas, inkling, Interact Builder, DemiBooks, Atavist, Talespring and others.

My perfect workflow would be to draft the book,  illustrate it in Designer (with Designer allowing frame animation), design in Publisher including any interactivity, and export across a wide variety of formats.  I realize this is a huge technical challenge, but it is my fantasy workflow.  

Thank you.

 

 

[William Overington]

It seems to me that there are broadly two types of interactivity - one is where one can just do something like turn on the playing of a sound clip - and the other is where one can do things which give the impression of being in an interactive environment. For example, moving around in a webspace or doing calculations or causing an illustration to vary depending upon a value that the end user inputs, such as a viewing angle.

William

 

[William Overington]

For example, the two following PDFs, both produced using Serif PagePlus. For the first one, I have only got it to work by downloading to local storage and then opening it in Adobe Reader.

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/the_mobile_art_shop.pdf

http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~ngo/localizable_sentences_the_novel_chapter_037.pdf

When you mention 'popups with texts' what exactly are you wanting to happen please?

William

 

[spamjim]

It is doubtful this is something in line with the audience and market for Publisher.  As you've noted with specific outputs, much of the "interactivity" options you see in other applications serve a company's larger portfolio of publishing services or intellectual property. For example, you can make interactive PDFs in Adobe software because PDF is developed by Adobe.

A first step to getting interactivity output options is to be able to tag content and export XML. That's what these other add-on developers work with to generate their "interactive" output.

[William Overington]

Well, the two example PDFs to which I linked were made by me using Serif PagePlus.

I did not need to use any XML at all.

Now how it works behind the scenes with what Serif programmed into the PagePlus software so as to provide such facilities in PagePlus I do not know.

William

 

[Steps]

Linked PDFs as output for a GUI mockup is all interactivity I may ever need.

I doubt that interactive books are the future.

I consider my self a digital native as I scan all my documents and want to have as much stuff in a digital form as possible, but I still make the exception for photo books.

There is just no substitute for giving someone else a physical book in the hand for photos. Viewing a PDF on an tablet will never feel the same.

I need a printable PDF version to print that physical book again if it gets destroyed or lost.

Here comes Publisher into play.

YMVV