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Méthode iPad Authoring at Ifra 2010: a planning and pagination environment for tablet editions
Friday 24. September 2010 - At the Hamburg event EidosMedia will present the extension of its Méthode platform to create a powerful new interactive environment for the planning and production of iPad editions.
“As the first cycle of experiments in putting news content onto the iPad draws to a close, two things have become clear,” said Massimo Barsotti, EidosMedias VP Marketing. “The first is that exporting print pages to the iPad and making them navigable isnt difficult. The second is – its not enough. To really add value for iPad users, publishers need to be able to tailor their content to take advantage of the unique interface features of this kind of platform.”
Méthode iPad Authoring is an interactive environment for planning and producing specific editions for tablet devices like the Apple iPad. Unlike the blind dumping approach, it gives staff hands-on control of planning and layout and is completely integrated with print and Web workflows – making the creation of high-quality tablet editions from existing news content fast, flexible and straightfoward.
The new feature is an extension to the Méthode editorial platform and will be on show to visitors at this years Ifra Expo in Hamburg (October 4-6). Working with the same channel-neutral XML content used to create pages for print and online publications, the iPad authoring environment creates pages optimized for the iPads display and navigation.
“Méthode offers a range of options to publishers in terms of the amount of customization they want to apply to the iPad channel,” explained EidosMedia president Angelo Grampa. “Like most other approaches, at the basic level it allows a simple export of the print pages to create an HTML5 e-version that can be browsed and zoomed on the iPad. This is a virtually automatic publishing process that involves very little staff intervention.”
“But its in the Authoring environment that Méthode shows its real power,” said EidosMedia CTO, Ismail Gazarin. “Staff start with an edition plan consisting of predefined iPad layouts. They drag the stories to publish into the page slots and they reformat to fit the layout. In a very short timeframe they can create a complete, dedicated iPad edition. Videos, photo galleries and advertising are linked in with similar drag & drop actions.”
“At any time staff can see a preview of the pages they are working on and and walk through and review the page flow in the navigation structure.”
Where more time and resources are available, Méthode iPad Authoring also allows considerable customization of pages destined for the new platform. Publishers can use this flexibility to launch new products including exclusive iPad digital editions or entirely new publications.
“Shapes and layouts can be adjusted and replaced – just as in the print channel,” said Steve Ball, EidosMedias marketing director for the US. “Text and image variants can be introduced that are specific to the iPad channel. Highly customized page designs can be created and then populated from Méthodes common content store.”
The iPad Authoring environment makes use of the same precision pagination engine used in the print channel. The fine typography and layout designs of the page templates are perfectly preserved in the creation of the iPad pages, allowing high standards of design quality to be achieved in the iPad edition on a daily basis.
“We envisage a similar evolution in tablet publications to that of the web ten or fifteen years ago, ” said Gabriella Franzini, EidosMedia Group CEO. “The first news sites were simple exports of print content to the web. Then news sites gradually developed their own formats and structure to become the sophisticated information portals we see today.”
“We see tablet formats following the same path. Méthode will allow publishers to move from simple mirroring of print and Web content to the creation of new and innovative news products for the tablet channel as the market evolves – while maximizing their productivity through tight integration with existing content flows.”