Version 3.1 of your (hopefully) favorite digital publishing platform is out. Of all the great new stuff in our 3.1 release, the one designers are going to be most excited about is the ability to build popups directly in InDesign.
What’s a pop-up? Quite simply, a hotspot that makes more information – text, graphics, a site – appear on top of the page. In the past, these had to be built in HTML to be incorporated into a Mag+ layout. Now you can do it directly in InDesign, and the implementation is super flexible and powerful.
You can watch a tutorial video or read a detailed how-to in our manual, but in short, we’ve just added a secondary layer to each of the three Mag+ layers that can contain as many pop-ups as you like just by drawing a box and filling it with something—text, images or a URL. Turning those popups on and off is done by a simple hotspot, just like adding a web link.
As I mentioned the implementation is super flexible: Popups can be associated with any of the Mag+ layers and will retain the qualities of those layers (so, for example, a pop-up on the A layer will scroll up freely). Pop-up elements can have indepdent pinning and snapping settings. They can be made to be initially visible, so a tap turns them off. There is also a type of popup called Modal, in which the background grays out and the pop-up appears to float above it with a close box in the corner. In addition, a popup can contain a Web site and an image to load if the device is offline.
We’re pretty excited to see what all our brilliant creatives come up with using this new function. And as always, if there are things you’d like to see popups support, let us know if in the forums here.
Also, don’t forget about the upcoming Q&A session I will be hosting on February 23. If you’ve got specific questions about the Mag+ tools or want tips on best practices, make sure you register and ask your questions, and I will address them in the live streamed webinar. And it’s free, as always.
