InDesign CC 2015 Released
The entire 2015 Adobe Creative Cloud suite has been released. Some new features:
- Paragraph Shading
- Images in table cells
- Publish Online (Tech Preview, English Only)
- CC Libraries enhancements
- – Support for Para and Char styles
- – Linked Assets : Images, Graphics etc
- Document Drawing Performance Improvements
- Integration with Adobe Stock
BUT BEWARE: if you do a clean install, you’ll erase your CC 2014. I always like to keep legacy versions available for clients who haven’t upgraded, and to avoid being stuck in a cycle of almost inevitable early-release problems.
Read this post from InDesignSecrets:
http://indesignsecrets.com/avoiding-problems-installing-indesign-cc-2015.php
No mention of changes to epub export, but I’m hoping this will fix a problem I’m having with epub versions of my latest ebook. ID’s epub export displays a vague error message about images having zero width or height but does create an epub.
That epub passes validation, displays fine in iBooks, and was accepted by Amazon and Apple Yet the pictures look absolutely awful in Adobe’s Digital Editions and Smashwords is giving me grief about them.
I can’t figure out what’s gone astray. All the images have sizes in ID. I’ve tried tweaking epub export preferences to no avail. I suspect there’s some key bit of code that’s set wrong and that Apple and Amazon simply correct but Smashwords doesn’t. I’ve gone round and round with Smashwords about not simply correcting problems that they know how to fix.
Has anyone checked to see if the new paragraph shading features of ID work with epub export?
Also see
http://blogs.adobe.com/creativecloud/how-to-installing-creative-cloud-updates/
for how to upgrade without clobbering your previous versions.
I’m hearing that there have been no changes in how InDesign exports OAM files (from, say, Edge Animate) when you create an FXL file. Apparently it still uses iFrame instead of DIV, so it still breaks in iBooks on iOS.
Michael, have you gone into the exported EPUB to check out the code? It’s worth noting that ADE is notorious for poor image sizing. I don’t know anything about Smashwords, so can’t comment there. How do the images look in purchased or Samples on iBooks and in the Kindle store? How about on a platform that uses ADE, such as Nook?
As for paragraph shading, the answer is, Yes! it exports. I’ll be posting about it tomorrow.
Hey, I’m a mere mortal not a CSS Superhero. I don’t go into the exported Epub when I can possibly avoid it. There are snakes and dragons and orcs living there.
Here are the specifics.
1. The document passes the epub validator fine. I’d hope it would at least give me warning that would make sense of what was happening. No such luck.
2. InDesign does give an error about zero-sized graphics when it exports without any details. So it does know that it is doing something that some might regard as a no-no. Unfortunately, it does not tell me how to fix it. Here is the error message. As you can see, it isn’t very helpful:
“The file was exported but one or more problems were detected:
Non rectangular objects will not appear correctly when exported using CSS.
This is not a valid dimension. Aspect ratio is not maintained when Width or Height is zero.”
No clue as to what that troublesome object is. A search for that error message for ID drew a blank.
3. The exported epub looks fine in iBooks and Apple has no problem with it.
4. It looks awful in Amazon’s dreadful Java preview apps with the images taken on distorted V v H ratios. But Amazon took that epub and converted it to mobi without a complaint. The mobi version they created looks fine in Kindle apps.
5. It passes epub validation with Smashwords but they reject it for sending to B&N etc, because it looks awful in ADE. Until it looks OK in ADE they’ll not take it.
This may be similar to an earlier problem I had with a Smashwords rejection. One of their staff was kind enough to tell me to remove an Apple-specific from the epub file and all would be fine. Here is that remark:
“Keep in mind that we distribute to many retailers, so we have to combine and accept their requirements when it comes to books on our site. However, anything that specifies how a book looks at a specific retailer is not needed in the EPUB file. So, you can remove any Apple-specific coding if the issue continues. How you do that is based on how you created the .epub file. Generally, you can unzip the file and you should see a folder that says META-INF. If you double click that, you will see container.xml and that Apple display options file. You can delete the Apple file and close the zip window. Then, re-upload at Dashboard > Upload New Version.
That is all it took to fix that problem. I suggested to her that it be better if Smashwords had an automated script that’d simply remove that offending file, apparently to no avail. I may try that with this submission.
Smashwords has its good and bad. It’s good in that it is very pro-author. It’s bad in that it wishes all submissions would be in a simplified Word for Windows format. It seems to have only grudgingly gone along with epub submissions.
I’ll keep plugging away. I just tried epub export in ID-2016 and got the same error message. I know Adobe has discussed making it possible for users to specify who an epub is for on export. It’s be good if that’d become a feature, so all these quirks could go bye bye.
By the way, as I posted to ID Secrets, for some reason a 6×9 book came into ID-2015 without its custom 6×9 page size template and with the page formatting looking bad. Simply creating and apply a new 6×9-inch page size template to the document seems to fix the problem. I’m not sure why that custom template got lost. My custom GREP scripts move to ID 2015 fine.
I wonder if you have any empty objects — text frames, picture frames — somewhere in your document that might be kicking up that warning. As for distorted images, do you have object styles assigned to them? You might try creating an object style that has no attributes, then exporting again, making sure to Preserve Appearance from Layout (in the Object dialog box during export).