Building an interactive booklet for the iPad

Question

I've been tasked by a client to create an 80 page interactive booklet which they would like to work exclusively on the iPad.

The client is providing the complete design in InDesign. They would like to achieve the following:

• Launch presentation when the iPad wakes up
• Page transitions
• Option to zoom via touch
• Play music with the option to mute
• Embedded video
• Embedded links

My initial thoughts were to build the presentation as an interactive PDF within InDesign, but I'm very concerned about the compatibility and size of the PDF.

Would you advise building the presentation in HTML5 or an alternative platform?

Answer 1

You could start in InDesign, export your text and a few different page layout options, and then customize for iOS.

I've found that getting the interactivity to work using the prescribed Adobe methods is a pain, and the only place the interactive documents will really function anywhere close to 100% is when you export them to the Adobe Server.

With the requirement that it work specifically for the iPad, and with a project that big, I'd say hire an iOS developer. If you want good interactivity you are probably going to want to hire an iOS developer to build it tailored to the running environment. You should use your PDF as a starting point, and maybe have a pared down PDF version available for download as a redundancy.