There’s essentially two ways for people to publish online theses days. Using a print solution like a pdf or a web based CMS. The problem is that both ways were created before tablets and smart phones. I don’t think they really take advantage of what screens have the capabilities of doing today. PDFs also need a lot of time to make and CMSs assume people know how to code. It’s also a lengthy process. Over the past couple of months Gesture Theory has been working on a better way to publish to the iPad and iPhone. Our first alpha release allowed people the ability to create a deck based on four templates. It was limited in what it could do but it gave us the ability to see how people were trying to use the decks. Based on those observations our next alpha release was pretty ambitious. That release happened last night. People can now add and delete panels, change the order of panels, select more types of panels for each template, change the typography based on font, color and size. We also added the capability to publish to an iPhone and change the format in terms of landscape or portrait depending on the template. We also looked at the editing tools. The library, panels and settings have been moved to the right rail. This release is pretty significant for us.
The biggest question I’ve been asked is who is DeckPub for? Tablets are visual in nature and allow for a type of interaction that doesn’t need to rely on a mouse click. Apps if designed correctly can work just as well offline as online. So one group of people that will love DeckPub are people that need to display their portfolio. That could be a photographer, a designer, or even a marketer. The second group that have found the work flow really easy are people that sell products. DeckPub is really helpful for people to create catalogs of their products for presentations or showing off property they are selling. The third exciting group are educators and those that create original content. All of a sudden people can now digitize their content in a private way that can be distributed online.
We’re already getting ready for the public beta release. We’re pretty close. All that is left is a bit of testing and sprinting. If you’re curious about DeckPub, just signing up for an invite at http://deckpub.com/
Here’s the workflow
Dashboard
Select a deck
Select a panel
Table of Contents panel
Build a panel
Add an image
Add text
Library on right rail
Typography settings on right rail
Add a background
Preview iPad deck
Preview iPhone Portrait
Preview iPhone Landscape
Share deck via email, Twitter or Facebook
