The Twixl Distribution Platform is a cloud-based service to manage the content in your app. A Twixl app is basically like an empty shell that gets its content from the Twixl Distribution Platform. On the platform, you will define the interface of your app, your navigation and optionally manage who can get access to the content in the app.
The Twixl Distribution Platform lets you:
On the Twixl Distribution Platform you can create the interface for your app, the browse pages that guide your readers through your content. Using a graphical user interface, you can easily preview the complete look and feel of your browse page, and changes you make are reflected immediately. You can create a separate setup for tablets and phones.
These ‘browse pages’ are essential to increase the reach of your app and let you guide your readers to the content you want to emphasize. Even if you are publishing on a regular interval it offers the capability not only to better present what you have to offer, but also to focus on different items from time to time.
Note that the configuration of your app’s interface is fully server-driven, so any change you make on the platform is reflected in your app on the fly. This means that there is no need to update the app itself if you just want to update the look and feel and the organization of your browse pages.
The Twixl Distribution Platform lets you managing your mobile content. You define which articles, issues or collections will be published in your app. Content can be organized in ‘collections’. A collection is a series of articles - in traditional kiosk type apps a collection would be the same as an issue. However, it is more flexible, because the same article can be part of different collections if you want to. You’ll define which collections or articles you want to highlight in your browse pages.
On the Twixl Distribution Platform, you’ll select whether a collection is a free download or an in-app purchase. The Twixl Distribution Platform then interacts with the App Store developer portals (iTunes Connect — for iOS apps, or Google Play Developer Console — for Android apps) to get detailed in-app purchase and subscription info for the app. This makes sure that for every purchase via the app store, the Twixl Distribution Platform will let the user download the correct content.
The Twixl Distribution Platform is first and foremost a storage platform where you will store all the content that you wish to publish. Whether you upload them manually, via an editorial system, a CMS or automatically via an RRS feed, all content will be stored on the Twixl Distribution Platform.
With article based apps the user downloads article per article and not a complete collection at once. To provide a smooth experience when moving to the first article in a collection and for quicker access, the subsequent article is pre-loaded in the background. Also, when e.g. navigating to article 5 in a collection, not only the subsequent article (6), but also the previous article (4) is pre-loaded in the background.
Here the user is in control and if he requests such a download we’ll inform him how much space the collection will take on his device and if he is fine with that to confirm his demand. In this case the total amount of data of the app can exceed the standard 750 MB, actually it is not limited but the user is in control and is in the ability to manage the content that’s stored on his device, and to remove certain content to free up space.
This way all content of all collections will be downloaded completely when first starting up the app. This is ideal for users who sometimes don’t have an internet connection when they are on the road. Every time a user goes back to the app and he’s online, a check will be performed if there is new and/or updated content that needs to be downloaded. The most common use cases are sales apps and apps of service manuals.
Article-based publishing is very bandwidth friendly because the reader only downloads what he reads, which is often not all of the available content in a publication or app.
Video content integrated in InDesign offers an option for streaming from our platform instead of downloading. You will need to evaluate whether streaming is the best option for you or if embedding would work better.
The bandwidth volume we offer is sufficient for about 95% of our customers. But in case you run out of bandwidth, you will notified in time. You’ll receive a warning when 75%, 90% and 100% of your volume has been used. You can then purchase extra bandwidth as required at the price of 750 € / 850 $ per 5 TB.
Bandwidth that is purchased remains valid as long as you have an active subscription for Twixl Publisher. So if you don’t use all of it during the year, it will remain available for the next year.
Twixl Publisher allows you to gather analytics information for your app.
Analytics data can also be exported as a .xls file or, using our API, you can even integrate with your CRM solution and automatically extract analytics data. Issue-based apps also support the use of Google Analytics.
You can send push notifications to all readers of your app, either when you are publishing new content or whenever you feel the need to get in touch with them. The number of push notifications you can send is unlimited.
Entitlement is available as an extra paid option for Twixl Publisher One, Four or Unlimited apps. We offer both built-in entitlement or restricted access options as well as the ability to interface with your own ‘custom’ entitlement server. This feature lets you integrate access for a subscriber or user database in your app. It allows you to determine who gets access to which content in your app.
Frequently publishers may want to provide print subscribers of a publication with free access to otherwise paid content in an app. Publishers can also offer certain content to a specific audience and so increase the value proposition and advertising value of their publication. Obvious segmentation criteria are e.g. regional content, language-specific content, etc. Other entitlement options allow the use of e.g. an access key or a promo code to claim free access to a particular publication.
The special "Users & Groups" entitlement option is targeted at companies that deploy apps in-house either by distributing an app internally using Apple's Developer Enterprise Program, or by publishing an app on the App Store with "restricted access".
Some publications are only meant to target a closed group, e.g. medical publications, reseller information, etc. Using entitlement allows a company to publish to specific target groups without making the content available to the public. Only entitled users that the company has defined will be allowed access.
Different groups can be defined so that each group may have access to different publications.
It is also possible to track analytics by entitlement token and so to analyze the behavior of every entitled user.
The Twixl Distribution Platform provides built-in support for a number of specific use cases for entitlements, but integration with a custom (external) entitlement server is also possible. In most cases, integrating direct entitlement will require some custom development to provide for the connection between the Twixl Distribution Platform and the publisher’s database of users/subscribers.
Technical documentation about how to integrate entitlements is available here.
Twixl Publisher lets you integrate with different editorial systems or basically any CMS so you can push your content directly from your solution to the Twixl Distribution Platform and thus into your app.
Using our API, any type of CMS could be setup to push content to the Twixl Distribution Platform.
Some custom development or help from a local integrator may be required to achieve this.
The Integration API is available as an extra paid option
Another way to integrate an external content source in an app on the Twixl Distribution Platform is by pulling content from an RSS feed. Any RSS feed can be integrated into your app and generate a collection of feed content items. This can be a standard web site feed (like WordPress, Drupal, etc.) or also a YouTube or Vimeo channel. It is a very easy and effective way to enhance your app.
One of the major changes brought by Twixl Publisher 5 is the different approach of how you publish your content.
Traditionally Twixl publications created in InDesign were published as monolithic issues in a kiosk app.
While the tradional magazine approach allowed you to get up and running quickly with your magazine, the downside was that the reader needed to download a complete issue first, before being able to start reading. Also, making a change to a single article in your issue required an update of the complete issue (and required the reader to re-download that issue).
Twixl Publisher 5's new article-based approach (which by the way is an option, not a requirement) offers many advantages.
”Automated Content Sources” let you pull content from RSS feeds, YouTube channels and Vimeo Channels in your app. This gives you the ability to enhance your app in a very easy yet valuable way.
This pack is available as an extra paid option.
Here's an overview of the different types of content items that can be used in a Twixl Publisher 5 article-based app:
Several types of links are also available:
Content sources are designed to make automated publishing in your apps easier.
They allow to easily integrate different types of feeds in your apps.
The types of content sources are:
Using InDesign's alternate and liquid layout features, you can easily generate a portrait version if you started with a landscape version, a 16:9 Android layout after you created a 4:3 iPad layout, or even a special layout for phones. Twixl Publisher allows you to generate the alternate layout for all articles in your publication with a single click.
When you convert an InDesign object to a button (using the Buttons and Forms panel), you’re able to attach an action to it, such as:
You can use the InDesign "Hyperlinks" panel to add a:
There is also a special "Web Overlay button" that lets you display an overlay with web content and define its size.
Slide shows are easily created with Twixl Publisher.
The slide show panel allows you to configure many options, such as the transition style, whether or not to show a scroll viewer indicator, whether to auto-play, allow full-screen view, etc.
Video or audio files can be embedded in the publication. Movies need to be H.264-encoded mp4 files, sound files need to be in MP3 format.
From the Media palette, you can either select a particular frame within the movie or a specific image as the poster frame.
A number of parameters let you define whether to play the movie automatically when loading the page, whether to play it full-screen, etc.
It is also possible to add a link to an external movie using the “Place a video from a URL” option from InDesign's Media palette.
You can also easily integrate a YouTube or Vimeo video, no HTML knowledge required.
The 'Scrollable content' option allows you to add scrollable content to a container frame.
Optional zooming can be enabled for the scrollable content to allow a user to use pinch to zoom, e.g. to see more details of an image.
The "Image Sequence" option lets you walk through a series of images while swiping.
The most frequent use case for this is to allow a reader to see a 360 degree view of an object.
You typically need a minimum of about 30 images for a fluid sequence.
Any rectangle on a page can be turned into a 'Web viewer', which allows you to add dynamic web content to your application. You can integrate live online content or run HTML5 applications within your publication.
Select a rectangle, then use the 'Web viewer' panel to enter the URL you want to display within its boundaries.
Embedded web content enables the use of web viewers even when a user is offline. Typical applications would be HTML5-based animations or a shopping basket. All local content, including assets, JavaScript, etc., is then placed in a WebResources folder within the same folder as that of the document.
You can add any type of HTML5 animation to a Twixl publication using a web viewer, but you can also directly drag and drop .oam files, created with several specialized tools, such as Adobe Animate or Tumult Hype.
Easily integrate an Apple map (iOS) or Google Map (Android) based on the criteria you define in the Twixl Publisher "Maps" panel, no HTML knowledge required.
A panorama VR lets you view a complete environment in 360 degrees and in 3 dimensions, but also lets you tilt so you can e.g. also have a look at the sky and at the floor within that environment.
In order to use a panorama VR with Twixl Publisher, you need a tool like Pano2VR. You can find more info here.
Certain interactive elements can be nested within slide shows or scrollable content areas:
When creating a new publication, you can select whether to support portrait only, landscape only or both orientations.
Navigating between different articles is done by horizontal swiping.
Navigation to the next page in the same article is done by vertical swiping.
When you use this option for a publication, it will place all pages, independent of the number of separate articles (documents and pages), horizontally one after the other. In this case, there is no vertical navigation.
Twixl Publisher-based publications automatically generate a Table of Contents overview that will be accessible as a dropdown menu. There's also a search and bookmarking capability.
Note that issue-based search and article-based search operate somewhat differently because the content is not accessible in the same way.
In issue-based apps the complete publication is available on the user’s device and a full text search is performed.
In article-based app possibly only a limited number of articles will be available on the user’s device. Here search is for all metadata (content item name, title, tag line, etc.) in the complete app, and not only in a specific collection. From the search results, one can quickly select the article to navigate to.
You can now add a quick access menu in the top right corner of your article-based apps. This menu is managed through a special collection called the “Hamburger menu”. It can be managed like other collections, with its own grid and cell styles, but is limited to the following types of content items:
The free Twixl Viewer Classic for iOS and Android allows a designer to send a preview of an InDesign article or publication to a tablet or phone on the local Wifi network.
Using Twixl Publisher's sharing feature, a designer can also share an article or publication with a client, a colleague, ideal for proofing purposes.
While Twixl Viewer Classic lets you preview InDesign content only, the Twixl App Reviewer provides the ability to review the complete interface of your app and the different browse pages, in addition to the InDesign, HTML or PDF based articles in the app.
Extra “App Reviewer” users can be added to your Twixl Distribution Platform account, so you can allow your clients, colleagues to provide feedback.
You can adjust a number of parameters for a collection in an article-based app, such as the number of columns and type of scrolling (horizontal or vertical), in the "Grid style" window. You can set different parameters for tablet and phone content.
The appearance of the cells on your browse pages can be changed in the Cell Style options window.
The basic structure defines the number of columns and rows that it spans, and you can set extra settings like border width and color, cover image options and how metadata is displayed in a cell.
Twixl Publisher 5 introduces what we call "browse pages" as a flexible way to present your content to readers. While browse pages can still mimic the behaviour of the traditional kiosk that contains different issues, the flexibiliy goes much further.
The layout of your browse pages will be defined using a grid-based approach. First of all, define a number of columns for your pages, then based on that your page will be divided into a number of equal squares.
Each "cell" on your layout will then span a number of squares.
Browse pages can be defined as either scrolling vertically or horizontally.
The look and feel of the kiosk can be adjusted when you build your app.
Here are some of the options that you can set:
Custom URL schemes allow you to control navigation in a Twixl publication.
You can use these schemes in:
Twixl Publisher allows you to publish on iOS and Android, both on tablets and on phones.
You can also generate a "Web Reader" export for display in a standard desktop or notebook browser.
While you are in a testing phase, you can create test builds of your app for internal or external testers, before you decide to make it available in the App Stores.
Apple also calls this "Ad Hoc" or "Testflight" distribution.
When you are satisfied with the test builds, you are ready to submit your apps to the app stores, i.e. Apple's App Store, the Google Play Store or the Amazon Appstore for Kindle Fire.
Build your app in the Twixl Publisher application, then submit it to the Apple, Google or Amazon portal.
Whereas Apple's "Ad Hoc" testing procedure is limited to a specific number of devices, iOS developers enrolled in the iOS Developer Enterprise program can easily distribute their application outside of the App Store without any device limit.
Typically this is used for wide-scale in-house distribution, using a Mobile Device Management (MDM) solution, such as e.g. Jamf Software or AirWatch.
For an article-based app, you can activate the browser client that lets you publish your content to your web site. Your complete app, both the browse pages and the article content is pre-rendered as HTML and published on our servers making it accessible from a browser.
By default the content is served from a Twixl domain, ‘browserclient.twixlmedia.com', but an optional ‘custom domain’ let you serve it from something like ‘yourapp.company.com'.
Single-issue apps have only one publication embedded in the app. Multi-issue apps will display a kiosk that can contain different publications.
There is an important difference in the distribution model of single-issue apps vs. multi-issue apps:
Twixl Publisher allows you to gather analytics for your publications.
There is built-in support for analytics in the Twixl Distribution Platform.
The following items will be tracked:
All interactive objects that you define using the Twixl Publisher plug-in (slide shows, movies, etc.) can have their own analytics name to simplify reading the analytics data afterwards.
It is also possible to integrate Google Analytics on issue-based apps.
A publication can provide readers with an option to share information via e-mail, Twitter or Facebook.
A custom sharing message can be defined when building your app.
Twixl Publisher 5 supports different content types. Our own .article and .publication format created using the Twixl Publisher plug-in in InDesign, HTML content and also standard PDF files for non-interactive publications. All of them can be combined in the same app.
Our multi-issue apps allow you to offer paid content to your readers.
You can offer publications to readers…
Article-based apps can be published in a full offline mode.
If a publisher configures an app for offline access, all content of all collections will be downloaded completely at first startup. This is ideal for sales people and service teams who sometimes don’t have an internet connection when they are on the road. Every time a user returns to the app and he’s online, a check will be performed to see whether new and/or updated content needs to be downloaded.
Push notifications are short messages that appear on the the lock screen of a mobile device or within the app itself.
You can send a push notification to all subscribers of your app every time you publish a new issue. They can be sent either manually or automatically when publishing a new issue.
Note: only readers that have decided to opt in will be receiving your messages.
The Twixl Distribution Platform offers built-in reporting and analytics for multi-issue apps, both on an app level and on a publication level.
Here are some app level reports that you will automatically have access to:
You also get detailed info on how readers are interacting with the publications:
In addition to the built-in analytics support for all apps on the Twixl Distribution Platform, it is also possible to integrate Google Analytics within article- and issue-based apps.
This feature provides the option to connect to a subscriber or user database.
It allows you to determine who gets access to which publications in your app, based on login information.
Frequently publishers may want to provide print subscribers of a publication with free access to otherwise paid content in an app.
Publishers can also offer their content to a specific audience and so increase the value proposition and advertising value of their publication.
Other entitlement options allow the use of e.g. an access key or a promo code to claim free access to a particular publication.
The special "Users & Groups" entitlement option is targeted at companies that deploy apps in-house either by distributing an app internally using Apple's Developer Enterprise Program, or by publishing an app on the App Store with "restricted access".
Some publications are only meant to target a closed group, e.g. medical publications, reseller information, etc. Using entitlement allows a company to publish to specific target groups without making the content available to the public. Only entitled users that the company has defined will be allowed access.
Different groups can be defined so that each group may have access to different publications.
The Twixl Distribution Platform provides built-in support for a number of specific use cases for entitlements, but integration with an custom (external) entitlement server is also possible. In most cases, integrating direct entitlement will require some custom development to provide for the connection between the Twixl Distribution Platform and the publisher’s database of users/subscribers.
Twixl Publisher lets you integrate with different solutions for automated production flows and so lets you push content to the Twixl Distribution Platform and into your app.
The “Integration API” option allows you to integrate with a number of solutions that we support out of the box, but using that same API, basically any type of CMS could be setup to push content to the Twixl Distribution Platform. Some custom development or help from your local integrator may be required to achieve this.
The CMS solutions that we support are:
This pack is available as an extra paid option.
Create your own article-based application and test the different features the Twixl Distribution Platform (TDP) is offering.
Contact us if you would like to extended your test period.
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