Using social sharing

When you create a custom multi-issue viewer app for the iPad or iPhone, you can enable Social Sharing. You or your customers can choose an option in your viewer app to share the article through Facebook, Twitter, email, or copy and paste. This message includes either a link to the publication URL or to the article, depending on whether you protect the article. Anyone who clicks the article link on a computer can view the article contents in the Adobe Content Viewer for the Web (also called the Web Viewer) in a browser. Anyone who taps the article link on an iPad or iPhone can open or download the app and view the article.

Views of the shared articles on the Web Viewer are included in download fulfillment counts. For details, see Social media download counts.

Social media customer workflow

For best results, take the following actions when you set up your folios:

• Create a 1024x768 folio using any image format. PDF articles are now uploaded to the Web Viewer server using PNG format. If you want to create a special folio to be used only for the Web Viewer, you can create a folio using any folio size, and select the Web Viewer Only. See Creating a Web Viewer-only rendition.

• Create folio renditions for all device models. Any article shared from an iPhone or iPad HD maps to the iPad SD (1024x768) rendition or the Web Viewer Only rendition in Web Viewer, and the article link maps to the appropriate rendition on the device.

• If you’re creating renditions, use the same Article Name values for the corresponding articles in each rendition to make sure that the shared article maps properly in Web Viewer and across devices. Also make sure that your folio renditions are set up properly. See Create folio renditions.

When your customers open an article in your viewer app, they can tap the sharing icon and select any enabled social media option: Facebook, Twitter, Email, or Copy Link.

Depending on which option they selected, customers can sign in, type a comment, and specify other information. For example, if they chose Email, they specify recipients and type a message.

If the article is protected, the link on the Facebook wall, Twitter feed, or email message goes to the Publication URL you specify in DPS App Builder. If you unprotected the article, the link goes to the article. If the article is no longer available in Web Viewer, either an error message appears in the Web Viewer, or the Redirect URL you specify in the Account Administration tool appears.

Users can either click the article link in a desktop browser or tap the link on an iPad or iPhone. What happens when users click or tap the article link depends on the following factors:

Supported Web Viewer features

Supported browsers include Internet Explorer 9, Explorer 10, Safari, Firefox, and Chrome. Internet Explorer 8 is partially supported, but it doesn’t handle HTML articles, videos, and other overlays properly. Mobile browsers cannot display the Web Viewer versions of articles.

Customers who share the article must have iOS5 or higher on their iPads for article sharing to work.

Not all overlays are supported at this time in the Web Viewer. Panoramas are not yet supported, and certain Web Content overlays might behave unexpectedly. For video, use M4V or MP4 with h.264 encoding, not MOV. For best results, use DPS App Builder to create a development app and test your unprotected articles in Web Viewer.

Setting up social sharing for your viewer app

To set up social sharing, do the following tasks:

• Enabling social sharing for Twitter, email, and copy/paste requires no additional setup tasks. However, to enable social sharing to work with Facebook, register your app with Facebook. For instructions registering with Facebook, see Setting up a DPS App for Social Networking.

• Use the Folio Producer Editor to indicate which articles are protected. For v25 folios and earlier, select Metered to allow articles you want to share. For v26 folios and later, select Free or Metered to allow the article to be shared. (In v26, Free and Metered have the same effect in Web Viewer. Free is used for for Free Article Preview in the device viewer.) When you publish or update the folio, the contents of unprotected (metered) articles are uploaded to a website on an Adobe server. The content should be available soon after the folio is published, but not immediately. If the folio you unprotect is retail, users who click the article link can view the folio in the desktop Web Viewer. However, iPad users who click the link must pay for the folio to view it unless they’re already entitled to it. See Folio Producer Editor.

• Use the Account Administration tool to enable social sharing and, if desired, limit the number of unprotected (metered) articles customers can read and set up paywall information. Also specify the iTunes Application URL so that users are directed to your app in the App Store if it's not installed. The Application Name you specify appears in the Web Viewer title bar and in the URL of shared articles. See Account Administration tool.

• Enable social media in the DPS App Builder when creating or updating your viewer app. See Create a custom viewer app for the iPad and iPhone.