3D Issue Professional Online Guide

Before reading this article on how to use 3D Issue Professional to add interaction to your digital magazine, please ensure that you have read the article on "Using the 3D Issue Converter".

3D Issue Professional is an innovative software solution that allows publishers to easily add all the interactivity that is currently offered by digital magazine service providers. The software enables you to easily add drop down menus, hotspots, video, audio, comment & send to friend functionality in a matter of seconds.

1. Introduction to 3D Issue Professional

2. Adding features to the digital Magazine

3. ASP & PHP Support

4. Auto zip offline edition

5. Creating Dynamic Drop Down Menus

6. Customizing the interface skin and language

7. Adding interactivity using "Page Interactivity"

8. Adding dynamic buttons to your digital edition

9. Previewing your digital edition within 3D Issue Professional

10. Keyword Searching

3D Issue Professional is split into 4 sections or tabs:

1. BOOK PROPERTIES
   This section to the right of the interface includes the customise options relating to the overall digital magazine, such as the drop down menu options, enabling reader functionalities to include such as printing, keyword searching etc and the customisation of the skin (background, top banner and introduction)

2. PAGE INTERACTIVITY
   This section focuses on adding interactivity to each individual page. Here you can add hyperlink  hotspots, web/email links, video & audio and other interactive options.

3. PREVIEW
   This section allows you to test the settings you have included so far. 

4. KEYWORD SEARCHING

3D Issue Professional allows you to add & remove features in the digital magazines with the click of a button. In the 'Publication Settings' Tab, there are also a variety of functions that can be added or disabled for this issue, such as :

- Allowing users to print pages,

- Send emails to friends,

- Search for keywords,

- Linking to previous issues,

- Enabling contents menu,

- Download off-line editions,

- Allow users to change zoom settings

- Make hotspots transparent until the user rolls over them.

Another new feature is the "Read Right to Left". This feature is to cater to international clients such as Arabic publications, who first page would be the back cover of the publication and the last page would be what we would classify as the front cover. Simply by clicking this button, the digital edition is completely reconfigured to handle this publication type. Along with reordering the pages, it will also change all page numbering, keyword search and contents menus to suit the configuration of the publication

There is one function in our digital editions that require dynamic scripts. The “Send to Friend” feature. There are many different types of server hosting platforms and to ensure that you can run these features on any windows or linux platform we have provide the ability to choose your script type.

If you are using windows servers, choose ASP and if you are any other platform choose PHP. Professional will then add the necessary scripts to the project folder.

If you have selected the “Download offline edition”, then you have stated that you wish to allow users to download the publication and view it offline. There are two options. If you have acquired the offline reader (Silver License), then you can allow the download this completely interactive and searchable digital edition onto their desktop for future viewing. If you do not have the offline reader package then select PDF and this will automatically zip your publication and attach it to the digital edition, ready for downloading.

The 'Expandable Menus' tab is for adding content options to the drop down menu options. This is for adding content options to the drop down menu options. ‘Contents’ will appear as a default in the first tab, however, you can edit the name by double clicking on it (this is the first Root Menu).

You can create a simple one-columned contents system by simply clicking on the ‘Contents’ menu once and then clicking ‘New Title’ at the bottom. Simply fill in the name that will appear in the drop down menu on the left hand side and then the page number on the publication they will correspond to.

If you wanted to create a sub contents system for additional drop-down options within the Root menu, click “New Submenu”. Let’s use ‘Sport’ as an example here. Click ‘New Submenu’ and enter ‘Sport’. This will now appear in bold format to highlight it being a submenu. Then simply click “New Entry” each time you wish to enter a new title to the submenu. This will give you the ability to categorize your contents system and keep it as tidy and efficient as possible.

The new entries are going to be the extra drop down menu that appear when I click on Sport from the main contents tab. So the first is football, second is basketball, third is baseball, and so on.

At anytime you may select “New Root Menu”. This will allow you to set up a new contents tab. You might want to create a list of your ‘Advertisers’, ‘Suppliers’, ‘Partners’, ‘Associates’ etc. To do this simply click “New Root Menu” and add your ‘Titles’ and ‘Submenus’ accordingly.

A new feature to the 3D Issue Software is the next tab where we can adjust the Flash properties of the digital magazine. You can enable and disable the top banner. If you enable this setting you must select the banner you wish to use. If this was to be used as for example a rolling ad display, you can add multiple files and select different interval times for the appearance onto the screen. You may also customise the background to your liking by selecting a different colour or inserting an image.

The software will also allow you to have no introduction or if you would like to have an introduction play on the starting of your digital publication you may use the default intro or choose your own customised intro.

Something that has just been launched is the ability to change the icons and images that 3D Issue uses in the finalized digital magazine layout. If you would like, you may change the icons to suit your own company’s look and feel by clicking “Options” and then “Images”.

A window opens and allows you to change the images to suit the design of your publication or web site. Simply choose the icon you wish to change from the drop down menus on the left hand side and then click “Change” and locate the new logo. Once you are done, click ‘OK’.

From the same drop down you can use the new translation toolbar, which allows you to change the language used in the template itself. Once you hit ‘Translations’ the following box appears with the original language and the translated language.

In the Page Interactivity tab you can add a variety of features to each page. At the top of this section there are a series of buttons that allow you to save changes and move between pages using the left and right arrow buttons or the go to page dialog box.

You will notice at the bottom of the screen that when viewing the pages the 3D Issue software has automatically detected and added URL and e-mail addresses to the digital edition. During the conversion process you will have stated whether you wanted these links added as hotspots or buttons. Any url or email that has been detected has been added to the panel at the bottom of the display area. To activate these links all you have to do is drag and drop these URLS onto the location.

To assist you in placing the hotspots accurately you can zoom in on the page by double clicking anywhere on the page.

You can activate interactivity on the pages by two methods. You can choose to initiate an action using either hotspots or buttons. To activate these features on a page all you have to do is click and drag the buttons / hotspots onto the canvas area and enter the value. A full list of the actions that you can add to a digital magazine are listed below.

Hotspots

These tools allow you to add hyperlinks & preview rollovers to a page. These features are located at top of the canvas area. To add a hyperlink hotspot, click on the hotspot button. When you move the mouse over the page you will notice that the cursor changes to a drawing tool. Once you have decided where to place the hotspot, click and drag. To complete, release the mouse button. Do not worry if the hotspot isn’t exact the first time as you can increase the width & height by clicking and dragging the small red circle in the bottom right of the hotspot box. 

Once you have released the mouse, a dialog box appears stating the width, height, x and y values. This info is used by 3D Issue to ensure that the hotspot is correctly placed in the flash application. Therefore there is no need to change these values. 

In the navigation section of the ‘Hotspot Information’ dialogue box, you can specify whether you want this hotspot to jump to a page, URL, send an email, play a flash movie, load a video or audio clip.

There are certain conditions for entering values in each of these fields:

Page

You must enter a numeric value only for page number. In the live digital edition, when clicked the digital edition will jump to that page number.

URL

The URL must contain the prefix ‘http://’. In the live digital edition, when clicked the digital edition will open a new browser window and load that URL.

Email

The email address must contain the “@” symbol. In the live digital edition, when clicked the digital edition will launch your email editor and start a new “send email” function to the email address defined here. 

Flash

The flash movie must be a SWF file. When you click on the browser button and select the SWF file, 3D Issue Professional will copy the file into a subfolder of the project folder, allowing you to easily manage the uploading of the full project.

Audio Clips

The audio clip must be an .mp3 file and must be stored in the folder or subfolder of the folder you are creating the digital edition in. Again all files will be copied into subfolders of the project folder.

Video Clips

The video clip must be an .flv file and must be stored in the folder or subfolder of the folder you are creating the digital edition in. 

Once you have entered the required info, click ‘Generate’ to add the hotspot.

These buttons are located to the right hand side of the canvas area. (See image below)

To activate an option you simply click and drag the button you want onto the canvas and release it at the location you want. 

Email - This button allows you to link to an email address. When you drag and drop this icon on to a page, you will be asked to insert an email address.

When the user clicks on this option in the live 3D Issue, their default email application will be loaded and a new email request will be initiated with this email address inserted into the “Send to” field.

Web link - Click and drag the button onto the page, and enter the URL you want loaded when this button is pressed.

Comments - This is a great new feature that allows users to add feedback functionality to their 3D Issue. This option allows you to create a topic / board that allow users to add comments / feedback on particular articles or products. After you click and drag the button onto the page you will be asked to enter a topic heading.  EG (article1)

Once you hit “OK”, a new topic is added to the database, (“article1”).

In the live edition, when the user clicks on this button, the comments dialogue box will open and the display box will show all comments that have been left by other visitors. (There is one comment from the editor entered by default).

The user can read through all comments and if they so wish, click on the add comments option to add their own feedback.

Video - You can also just add video by clicking on a button. Click and drag the button onto the page, and enter the location of the .flv file.   Similarly to the video on start option, the file will be copied to a subfolder of the project folder.

SWF - You can also just play flash movies by clicking on a button. Click and drag the button onto the page, and enter the location of the .swf file.   Similarly to the SWF on start option, the file will be copied to a subfolder of the project folder.

Audio - You can also just add audio by clicking on a button. Click and drag the button onto the page, and enter the location of the .mp3 file.  Similarly to the audio on start option, the file will be copied to a subfolder of the project folder.

Go to page - This option allows you to jump to particular pages in the 3D Issue. Click and drag the button onto the page, and enter the page number you want to go to when this button is clicked.

Download file - If you want to allow users to download files, simply click and drag this button onto the page and enter the URL location of the file when requested.

If at any time you wish to edit the values that you entered for any button, simply double click on the button and edit the value entered or click on delete to remove the button from the page.

To test your work so far, click on the ‘PREVIEW’ tab. This allows you to view the work so far. By clicking on the tab, a fully functional 3D Issue is displayed within 3D Issue Professional. This will allow you to test the interactivity that you have added so far.

Keyword Searching allows users to find articles of interest on the live version very quickly by simply entering keywords and quickly jumping to pages and articles containing instances of that keyword. By default when 3D ISSUE PROFESSIONAL extracts all the text from your PDFs it only divides it into one entry per page. What this means is that when you are doing a keyword search in the live 3D Issue the results will only tell you the page that word appears on. In 3D ISSUE PROFESSIONAL this is denoted by the removal of any spaces between different paragraphs (i.e. no empty white lines).

You can however, split the text from each page into paragraphs to assist users in finding the keywords. To do this, all you have to do is go to the end of each paragraph and hit “enter” on your keyboard.

See image below. This page is now split into five paragraphs and when you do a keyword search in the live 3D Issue you will now notice that it doesn’t just tell you the page the keyword appears in but also the paragraph number.

So this means that in the live version (which you may also view in the “Preview” tab), when you search for a particular term, you are alerted that it shows up x times in the publication, what pages it shows up on and also which paragraph it appears.