*** From the Archives ***
This article is from April 8, 2011, and is no longer current.
Latitude3195: Cari Jansen’s New iPad Magazine
I can’t think of a better way for an InDesign trainer and consultant to get up to speed with Adobe’s Digital Publishing Suite (DPS) than to use the software themselves to create their own tablet magazine – from writing to design to production, all the way to a listing on the Apple App Store.
That’s exactly what Cari Jansen has done with her new publication, Latitude3195, which debuted on the App Store today (free, for the initial 10-page teaser). Those who can, teach!
Hailing from Perth, Australia (guess which latitude that city is at), Cari Jansen is a world-renowned InDesign expert. She’s an Adobe Certified Instructor and an all-around Adobe guru. Way back in 2006, we interviewed Cari in our podcast (episode 32) where she enthusiastically talked about using XML in InDesign to whip up a winery guide. (Yes, I still remember that! “XML” and “wine” used together in the same story, it was great.) After a stint with Typefi, she’s back to training and consulting with some juicy publishing projects. And of course, Cari is one of our blog contributors, and will be presenting at our upcoming Print & ePublishing Conference in Washington, D.C. next month.
The tagline for Latitude3195 is “A magazine that brings you creative tips, tricks, product information and more . . . ” In the free teaser issue, Cari includes a letter from the editor (herself), a couple how-to articles (one on InDesign, one on Acrobat), a “Creative Suite 5 Showcase” of a packaging project from Perth-based graphic design studio Dessein, and in the User Community Spotlight article, a look at our friend Marijan Tompa (@tomaxxi, Inditip blog) and a couple of his free InDesign scripts.
Interactive effects possible with Adobe’s DPS are used sparingly but effectively in this teaser issue. For instance, in the article about “going green” by scanning and optimizing paper documents to PDFs, the little icons of a pointing finger invite you to tap on them to open an overlapping screen shot of the relevant dialog box in Acrobat Pro, as shown in the bottom screen shot. (Click the screen shots to enlarge). Tap on the icon again to close the extra artwork and continue reading.
There is no audio or video in this issue – I’m guessing Cari’s saving that for full issues, in what she says will be a quarterly publication. You will need an iPad to download and read Latitude3195 (here’s that iTunes Preview link again) but Cari says she’s working on rolling it out to other tablets using different operating systems in the near future.
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Thank you so much for this beautiful write-up Anne-Marie! I am sooooo looking forward to meeting you in person in May!
Cari
BTW, this is only an iPad app which cannot be used on an iPhone. . .
I just finished flipping through Latitude3195. Anne-Marie, thanks for spotlighting this new pub.
Cari, I’m far from done reading and exploring, but so far I’m very impressed. I especially like the “pop up” idea for screen shots.
I look forward to hearing more from and about you and Latitude3195.
Love it ! I expect that all educational text books will be created so they are more like mini-wiki projects, with wonderful interlinking to resources, how tos, tips and tricks, sample/examples and other helpful things.
Thanks for this effort Cari ! Inspring ! And thanks Anne-Marie for the heads up !
Very nice Cari! Do you ever sleep?
@Steve Straus: Thanks for catching that, I’ve corrected the article.
@Keith
Ha-ha … my golden rule is — after a job in which I had too many short nights — to always try and get some quality sleep… However, I seem to be one of those people who can get by with 6-7hrs a night ;-) means I have more time to play :-)
Adobe just lowered their pricing for the “platform” fee of the DPS Professional edition a bit, from $700/mo to $500/mo. A move in the right direction.
https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalpublishing/2011/04/pro-edition-pricing.html
Move in the right direction indeed… but still a fair distance away from where I’d like it to be…( Looking at Professional Edition… )
Cari’s app is on the Digital Publishing Suite Gallery. There are well over 200 apps, with something for everyone. Check them out here:
href”https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalpublishinggallery/”
Well that link didn’t show up the way I expected. Here it is again:. Just copy and paste it into your favorite browser!
https://blogs.adobe.com/digitalpublishinggallery/
You’re an inspiration, Cari. Compliments on bringing your teaser issue to fruition.
Like @garrick, I like the pop-up screen shots that demo the steps.
FYI~ I was unable to get the pinch control to respond when I tried to zoom in.
Pinch-zooming on the iPad often fails me too in many instances/apps; discovered a well-hidden accessibility feature in iTunes that allows 3-finger zooming (much like the Mac accessibility feature) but it’s often a blessing and a curse.
—
“New Shimmer is a Floor Wax and a Desert Topping! Here, I’ll spray some on your mop… and some on your butterscotch pudding…. hmmm… tastes great… even removes black heel marks!”
Am I the only InDesigner in the world without an iPad (rolling green eyes).
Hi Ann,
Don’t feel bad, I just got mine about 2 weeks ago, and I got the old version. You’re not the only holdout!
Great start to a new publication.
My favorite part of this free issue was the “User community spotlight”. Not only were Marijan’s tips and scripts a great discovery, but his contact links at the end of the article were an eye-opener. First time experience with an “iPad Site”.
If you haven’t downloaded this issue, it is worth the experience of jumping into Marijan’s sites to experience this feature.
Click on inditip.wordpress.com and see this innovative addition to WordPress plugins.
One question Cari, could you share how this is done from inside an ePub so that it jumps right back to the pub after leaving Marijan’s site by clicking the DONE button.
BTW: sometime the indisnip.wordpress.com returned an error by trying to go to ndisnip.wordpress.com (which doesn’t exist). Don’t know if this is glitch on my iPad, but it repeated even after a reboot.
@Rocky Thanks for the kind words :) I’ve fixed the ‘blooper’ in the web-address you mentioned and just uploaded an updated version of the magazine. Thanks for bringing it to my attention!
Also the pop-ups that appear for Web-references, are controlled by the Viewer application. I didn’t need to do anything more than build the hyperlinks. In iBooks clicking on a link jumps to Safari as iBooks eReader can’t read web-content within the application itself AFAIK.
@Rita Thank you Rita :) this edition doesn’t include any pinch & zoom components, but in the “Design beyond expectation” article, page 1 top left image, you can pan to see the various coffee packaging images.
that sounds pretty good :-)