Viewing entries tagged
print media
My Christmas wish-list is easily transcribed onto a post-it note. I have what I need and want very little. When Christmas morning arrived and I carefully teased the paper away from a gift labelled to me I graciously accepted this ‘want’ – the ‘Beastie Boys Book’.
Valued Flip Page clients,Flip Page Publishing is very pleased to announce the launch of Version 2.0 of our mobile browser version. Our goal was to create a mobile viewing experience that closely resembled the desktop experience. With that in mind we have added a number of features that have helped reach this goal.
For a full listing of features please see below.
Navigation Elements
Pinch and Reverse Pinch Zoom URL links Article links – display in media deck Page-to-Page links Search enabled – per issue and publication Archive issues (if allowed by publisher) Orientation handling for mobile devices Spread or Single Page Viewing Left/Right navigation buttons for non-touch devices Slide transition Scrubber – visual page scroll and selection
Multimedia
Embedded Video Popup Video Autoplay Video Audio Slideshows
Smart App Banner – reader notification that a Native App exists for that publication (iOS devices only)
Retail (Catalogs and Circulars) features – Rollovers
Supported customization
Custom/masked publication domain names Background color and text color of these areas can be customized: Toolbar Search Panel Table of Contents Toolbar can be completely customized with HTML coding
Authentication/subscriptions
Thermostats integration *The upgrade to our mobile viewer will instantly be applied to all publications (past/present/future) with no additional requirements from our clients!
Contact your account representative with any questions you may have related to our new mobile version!
There are a predicted 7 billion cookies consumed in a given year in North America alone. They come in a variety of flavours, shapes, brands and sizes which are equally delightful. But the physical cookie doesn’t stand alone. It has a digital counterpart - the web cookie – and we also consume an incredible amount of these as well. Unfortunately for the sweet-tooth, web cookies have no physical form, or smell, or flavour or anything that would relate them to their namesake.
So what do web cookies do? Cookies are small bits of data that are transmitted between a web browser and the web site being visited. Much like the baked product they come in a number of shapes and sizes. Some cookies provide a better web experience, others authenticate users, some store information, and others track usage. If you have ever visited a website and noticed that on the second visit to that same site the experience was faster, smoother, or adapted to your preferences you can thank a cookie.
Would you like to gain some insight on the impact that web cookies have on web browsing? Try this recipe - the next time that you find yourself aimlessly browsing the web turn off or disable cookies in your web browser (here are instructions on how to do this for Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome and Safari). You will be surprised. There is very little successful web browsing that can occur with cookies in a ‘disabled’ state. The images in our April 2013 Newsletter are the result of a one hour, cookie disabled, browsing experience.
So does Flip Page Publishing use cookies? We do - in a number of different applications and uses as has previously been mentioned. Our cookies authenticate users (ie. subscriptions or free registrations), create a better browsing experience (stored images to facilitate page rendering), track reader usage (analytics) and store information (bookmarks, notes). Without the use of cookies the functionality of our platform would be severely limited.
It may seem that 7 billion cookies consumed per given year is a large number. What if the population of North America were to eat a chocolate chip cookie for each website visit in a day? How quickly would we reach 7 billion cookies consumed? I would guess a single week. After a week it would not be long before weight gain, elevated blood sugar and tooth decay set in. But all is not lost. We can continue to digest morsel after morsel of web cookie and enjoy the heightened browsing experience as a result.
Do you have a sacred document that you would like to keep under tight wraps so it doesn’t get in the wrong hands? Maybe a corporate document that you would like to share within the office but would not like it to be viewable outside the office even by employees. Let us introduce you to the feature we call ‘The Vault’. The Vault allows the publisher to lock down a publication to a single or group of I.P. addresses. Unauthorized users will be prompted with a login page with no authorized credentials that will allow permission to access.
What is an I.P. address? It is the unique string of numbers that identifies a device that is connected to the internet.
Contact your Flip Page Publishing account representative for more details!
According to Wikipedia “Portage or portaging is the practice of carrying water craft or cargo over land, either around an obstacle in a river, or between two bodies of water. A place where this carrying occurs is also called a portage.”
Flip Page Publishing is happy to announce that we now allow you to portage your content from the dry surfaces of a digital edition to the warm currents of Google. What is Google Currents? Find out here. In a nutshell it is a newsreader App that allows publishers to push their textual and image content into a mobile savvy version for ‘on the go’ consumption. Currents features tidy categorization, reader subscription and of course full function searchability.
So what have we done? We have provided an ‘export’ URL that allows you to portage all of your ‘Article’ content across the great divide directly into Google Currents or Flipboard. Once your Google Currents account is setup, new articles are automatically pushed to the aggregator with no manual intervention from you.
Need some more information? Contact your Flip Page Publishing account rep!
The first 2 segments (Part 1 and Part 2) of this series have covered the limitations of traditional print media when converted to a digital format and have also focused on a couple of the unique tools which provide for a quality reading experience despite those limitations. This segment will provide ample suggestions on how to manage and prepare for output to digital from ‘A’ to ‘G’.
Data has shown that an optimized digital edition (different layout and content) yields an average of 20% deeper engagement (as measured by publication specific data) than a print replicated version. Here are some hints and tips to consider when designing for digital print media.
Analyze – find out where your readers are going to be coming from and plan for the masses. Don’t assume the mobile tablet is your starting point since current data suggests the ratio of web readers to mobile web readers is 10:1.
Build – questionnaires, polls, call back cards, business reply cards, or customized forms that create an interaction between the reader and the publication or advertisers.
Creativity – Keep in mind that you are designing for digital. As an example, rather than providing textual footnotes or end notes within the layout provide them in the link ‘hover’ tip and link directly to the reference on the web. Or provide a simple question to your readers within the content, provide a clue in the ‘hover’ tip, and provide the answer as a link. Click here for sample.
Consistency – Once you have established how a reader interacts with your publication maintain that trend. For example, if a ‘play’ button represents embedded multi-media, don’t stray. Determine interactive elements, buttons, icons and stick with them. Also, as a general rule ‘If it looks like it should click, it should click’.
Design – focus on publication layout but also consider the interface. Toolbars and backgrounds are customizable and should be a consideration for the project. Click here for sample.
Dimensions –Tablets allow the user to rotate from landscape to portrait view with ease. This is not the case for PC and laptop users. Since PC and laptop displays are typically wide and short (especially HD) consider a layout that meets those requirements (opt for ‘letter’ over ‘tabloid’).
Educate – inform your reader of the tools that are at their disposal, how to navigate, special features, buttons etc. The reality is that the reading experience is intuitive (flipping or swiping pages) but the extra features may not be. Use a presentation page or plan for some additional content in the layout of your publication. Click here for sample.
Engage – Leverage additional content in the form of audio, video, slide shows, animations. Use the tools that are at your disposal.
Expand – Do not restrict valid or quality content to page counts when designing or crafting the layout of a digital publication.
Fonts – It is well established that print media has typically preferred ‘serif’ fonts for newspaper and magazine layout. There is a general tendency to conform to ‘sans serif’ options for online reading. Consider both viable options but adjust the font size to prevent a reader from having to zoom – use a minimum size 12 with a preference for size 14.
Gauge –Interactive elements within a publication are tracked by analytics. The more interactive the publication the more data that can be compiled. As an example, if an advertiser embeds a 40 second video into their spread ad, and the average time spent on that page is 72 seconds, it is safe to assume that the video content was relevant to the reader and the ad impression was significant.
