You ever wanted to make publication (brochure, portfolio, a book for children, album, etc.) for iPad/iPhone, published finally at AppStore? Sounds difficult and expensive. If you don´t have the latest InDesign and/or quite a lot of money to spend for the project, you could try AppPress – web-based publishing system for iPad (also an iPhone -version can be produced easily from the same material). Timelimited, fully functional trial is available.
You can compose pages in InDesign using a template for iPad. Designed pages are exported as .JPG or .PNG -files (pages using transparency and other CS effects – search Google for “script, InDesign, export, png”). You can also make transparent scrolling high pages this way, something like mag+ produces. Basically you can also design individual pages in any program you like as long as they have certain pixel dimensions and are saved as jpg or png.
As a final publication tool you will use a web browser (Chrome preferred), so you can compose and edit your publication anywhere you have a connection to your account. You control layers, multimedia elements, pages and final publishing with a browser. All elements on the page (sounds, movies, ads, jpgs, pngs) are uploaded to your account, and used from this library. You can have several publications made simultaneously.
You must pay a monthly fee for the account (15-99$ a month) to keep your unpublished publications alive and publish fee (199-0$) to get your work published at your Apple developer account (App Press takes care of the traffic and creation of apps, you manage your Apple developer account all the time).
Projects can be shared with other people and also used locally with an Preview App, some examples of ready apps found here.
Summary:
App Press is not a production tool for large scale publishing, but an interesting alternative with a different approach for smaller developers/researchers and indie publishers (with relatively small costs).
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