You can use a number of authoring tools to build content for apps. InDesign is one of them. In InDesign, you create the layout, add interactive overlays as needed, and then use the Export dialog box to export article files.
Fixed-layout articles you create using InDesign can appear on any support device, both phones and tablets, with scaling and letterboxing as needed.
- If you are converting documents used for a print publication, we recommend that you create a new document for digital publishing and copy assets.
- Turn off facing pages.
- Do not use the Page tool to change the page size, unless the articles will be exported as Smooth Scrolling.
- To avoid large article files, use properly sized MP4 files for videos and compressed JPEG and PNG files for image sequences and pan & zoom images.
- For non-interactive images or slideshow images, you can use any format, including PSD, TIFF, AI, PDF, and JPEG. When you create an article or layout, the non-interactive objects on each page are compressed and converted into PDF. Similarly, slideshow and button images are compressed into PNG files.
- If you place PDF files in your InDesign document, use non-flattened PDF 1.4 or later to avoid unwanted white lines.
- To get the best color fidelity, use RGB color images instead of CMYK or LAB.
InDesign includes several features that make it easy to create source files for AEM Mobile articles:
- Digital Publishing Intent setting in New Document dialog box
- Alternate Layouts
- Overlays panel
- Panels such as Object States and Buttons and Forms
When creating source files, do not use facing pages—use only one page per spread.
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- For Page Size, specify the target device such as iPad. If necessary, change the width and height values.
- Your exported article file will be scaled and letterboxed as needed for display on any tablet or phone.
- To target iPads, we recommend using 1024x768 pixels. To target iPhones, we recommend using 1136x640 pixels (or 568x320 to maintain the same object and text sizes relative to the 1024x768 iPad documents).
- If you want to allow smooth scrolling in your article, you can specify a custom page size (such as 1024x3000 or 768x2000). Make sure that you select the Smooth Scrolling option when exporting the article.
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Not all InDesign interactivity features are supported in the digital publishing workflow. For example, animations created with the Animation panel are not supported.
All overlays are supported except for panoramas. For information about creating overlays, see Creating interactive overlays in InDesign.
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To make sure you are using the most recent version of the tools, choose Help > Updates in InDesign, and then run the updater. For details, see Installation and setup for AEM Mobile.
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In the Export dialog box, select the layout (if the document has multiple layouts), and Target Device.
Choosing a Target Device is a shortcut for specifying the dimensions. Specifying the dimensions is especially important for Smooth Scrolling articles. For example, if your source layout is 768x3000, you should specify iPad (768x1024) dimensions so that the article is scrollable. If you specify the source layout dimensions (768x3000), your entire article will be displayed on one page. The Smooth Scrolling option is not available if the source layout has more than one page.
For non-Smooth Scrolling articles, we recommend that your target dimensions have the same aspect ratio as your layout. In other words, don’t choose iPad for 1136x640 layouts.
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In the Content & Layouts section of the On-Demand Portal (https://aemmobile.adobe.com), upload the exported article file to the appropriate article. See Managing articles in AEM Mobile.