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• • August 7, 2014 at 5:53 pm #69973
    Steve Shipley

    Participant

    I would like to export a 3-column text frame from InDesign CC to EPUB. Is there a way to do this? I see Adobe has an experimental EPUB Export option called EPUB plus Layout (or something like that), but not sure how to evoke that and also concerned about how many ereader apps would support it.

  • August 8, 2014 at 6:30 am #69975
    Anne-Marie Concepcion

    Member

    InDesign CC 2014 will let you export a Fixed Layout EPUB that looks like a PDF of your layout but is actually an epub. Earlier versions that refer to “EPUB plus Layout” can’t export to Fixed Layout, and in fact the “plus Layout” experimental options was dropped, I think w/CC.

    The “regular” reflowable EPUB cannot do multicolumn text.

    More info on CC 2014 to fixed layout is here:

    Adobe’s New FXL Export

    I’m also doing a webinar on it this coming Tuesday, Aug 12 2014 (and after that, the recording should be available on Adobe’s site).
    https://creativepro.com/free-fixed-layout-epub-webinar.php

    AM

  • September 9, 2014 at 2:32 pm #70489
    Margie Deeb

    Participant

    Anne-Marie, I’m taking your Lynda.com course on InDesign to EPUB and loving it. But finding it so frustrating (not your teaching, but all the HTML and the differences between the version of ID most of the course is in and the one I’m using: 2014).

    Do you know why my fixed layout epub docs look fine in iBooks, but not Adobe Digital Editions? I know you said only Apple iBooks supports fixed layouts, but I would have thought that Adobe does as well?

    Also, in reflowable epubs, is there any way to fix my column width? Sometimes I need narrow single columns on a page for an author bio. I’ve tried using a paragraph style with indents… doesn’t work. Obviously the text box has nothing to do with column width. Can you help me?

    Thank you, you’re a great teacher and your dogs are extremely cute.

  • September 10, 2014 at 8:31 am #70499
    Aaron Troia

    Participant

    Regarding fixed layout looking fine in iBooks vs ADE, it really does come down to support for fixed layout, which ADE does not, you would think with the direction Adobe is heading with InDesign that ADE would have better support for files that InDesign could produce, but unfortunately that isn’t the case.

    For the column width you are trying to accomplish, I don’t think you can do it straight from an InDesign export (I might be wrong though), for that you would probably have to go into the ePub file after export and change the margin-right and margin-left in the CSS class for those paragraphs you are referring to.

  • September 10, 2014 at 8:58 am #70513
    David Blatner

    Keymaster

    Actually, Adobe released Adobe Digital Editions (ADE) version 4 this week, which does support fixed layout epubs. Many people say it was released too soon (a bit buggy; doesn’t support fxl spreads, etc.) but it’s a good start and I assume they’ll keep updating it. And, of course, there are several other FXL readers, including iBooks and kobo, etc.

  • September 10, 2014 at 9:53 am #70515
    Margie Deeb

    Participant

    Just downloaded ADE 4.

    Thank you, Ron and David.

    I really appreciate your time and this forum & site.

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