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What are the best ways to test .article files created with InDesign's Digital Publishing features?

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Level 1

Hi there,

I have limited experience with InDesign's Digital Publishing features, but I'd like to know how everyone goes about testing their articles while/after they've worked on them. You used to be able to use the Folio Preview option (two years ago or so), but I understand that they removed it because it wasn't an accurate representation of the article and its format.

To those who know more about it, and have used the Digital Publishing Suite a lot more than me, what ways do you use to test your articles? If they are mostly online, could you suggest a fairly accurate way of doing so offline as well? I'm hoping that since InDesign now allows you to export .article files, it should be fairly easy?

Thanks in advance,

J

16 Replies

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Level 1

DPS has been dropped from the recent versions of InDesign (CC2015/2017) and it's not now affordable unless you're a publishing giant. Have a look at in5 Ajar Productions: in5 - Home

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Level 1

I understand that people are phasing it out to some degree, but as far as I can see InDesign 2017 still has all of the tools to build interactive content and export articles.

What I'd like to know is of efficient methods of testing the .article files, considering that the Folio Preview function doesn't exist.

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Level 1

That's not a format, it's a platform.

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Level 6

.article files are used in AEM Mobile. I'm moving this discussion there.

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Level 1

I was under the feeling "article" file format is binary so probably not easily investigable.

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Level 1

My mistake then. Do you mean .article? If this isn't what you are referring to, then you will need to be more specific.

I mentioned it earlier. Unless there is a different format that people use for the purposes of testing.

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Employee

With DPS, anyone with an Adobe ID can create and preview folios. With AEM Mobile, an account is required to test articles.

InDesign CC 2015 and later support only AEM Mobile. To create DPS folios, you need to use InDesign CC 2014, CC, or CS6.

To sign up for an AEM Mobile trial account, go here: https://try.aemmobile.adobe.com/

Regarding the testing of InDesign-based .article files in AEM Mobile, create an article and add it to a collection. Whenever you make a change to the InDesign article that you want to preview, export the .article file, upload it to the project, and click the Preflight icon. You can then use the AEM Preflight app to test your content.

Getting started with AEM Mobile

Use the AEM Preflight app to view AEM Mobile content  

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Level 1

This helps, thank you.

Regarding the creation and preview of folios with DPS using an Adobe ID, could you give me more information regarding how to do that? I've used the Publish Online feature, so that I can use my Online Dashboard to manage and view different documents. The only problem is that it doesn't seem to give me a proper (accurate) test of my document (features such as swiping doesn't work, for example, which I understand is usually exclusive to certain devices).

So, my next question would be - should I be using the Online Dashboard to view the content on the correct device? If I am creating content for an iPad, am I forced to only test it on an iPad?

Please excuse all of my questions - I am just trying to wrap my head around finding a way to work with the DPS efficiently, and I am wondering if I can do most of my testing on a desktop PC/Mac, before I eventually test it on a device.

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Employee

DPS and Publish Online are two separate workflows. Publish Online is fully available to any InDesign user. In InDesign CC 2014, DPS is also available for limited previewing using the Content Viewer app. However, in order to create you own app, you need a DPS/AEM Mobile license. What are you trying to accomplish?

Information about Publish Online: Use Publish Online to publish your InDesign documents

Information about DPS: https://helpx.adobe.com/digital-publishing-suite/topics.html

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Level 6

DPS has nothing to do with Publish Online. So, I think you need to clear up exactly what you’re trying to do here.

DPS uses apps to display your content as does AEM Mobile. Publish Online is a free service included with your Creative Cloud account and uses the web to display your content.

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Level 6

Sorry, missed Bob’s response.

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Level 1

I see. I think that I am mixing up workflows here, as you are indicating.

What I used to be able to do, was use InDesign to build interactive publications (for iPad, for example) and use something like the Adobe Content Viewer to test/simulate that publication on the go. Now, they've removed the Content Viewer because it wasn't an accurate simulation.

How can I then test my publication in something like InDesign 2017, where the Adobe Content Viewer is not available anymore?

I realise now that my original question was misinformed. My apologies.

However, I may still be confusing some things. So, here is another question - is it still possible to build interactive publications for devices like iPad within InDesign? Or is Adobe shifting that workflow entirely to AEM Mobile? Because if that's the case, then what I am trying to accomplish doesn't really make sense.

Once again, thanks for the help, and I will take a look at the links that you've given. (On a side note, one reason that I'm a bit confused is that Adobe's own website contains various pages and information about DPS, but they often seem to contain conflicting information, especially since DPS features for different InDesign versions seem to be incongruent, such as the Content Viewer).

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Level 1

As I mentioned earlier, which format do you want to produce your publications in?

Maybe you shoukd consider Reflowable text ePubs or Fixed Layout ePubs, which can have a certain amount of interactivity (especially FXL), and can be produced with InDesign CC2015/2017 and be viewed on an IPad and most other platforms.