The Twixl Distribution Platform combines different cloud-based services that manage the distribution of your content and manage who gets to download what. In addition, it also lets you communicate with your subscriber base by means of push notifications. You can set up multiple apps, and manage the articles and issues in those apps.
Apps can contain free content, in-app purchase content (per issue), and/or content offered as part of a subscription.
The Twixl Distribution Platform is first and foremost a storage platform where you will store all the content you want to publish.
Articles, whether it’s InDesign, HTML or PDF content, can be uploaded manually and will be stored on the platform.
If you work with an external production workflow solution, then you’ll usually publish from within that solution, directly to your app on the platform.
The Twixl Distribution Platform is hosted on Microsoft Azure servers and uses the Akamai CDN (Content Delivery Network) to ensure optimal download speeds from any location around the world.
The Twixl Distribution Platform takes care of managing your mobile content. First you create your app on the Twixl Distribution Platform. Then, you define which articles, issues or collections will be published within that app.
The cloud-based environment lets you select which article(s) are going to be available via 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 info about the content in the app. This makes sure that for every purchase via the store, the Twixl Distribution Platform will let the user download the correct content.
Entitlement is an extra paid option and offers both built-in entitlement / restricted access options as well as the ability to use an external entitlement server. So you will be able to determine who is entitled to get access to which content.
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:
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 Edge 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 six images that represent the six inner sides of a cube. Several tools are available on the market to generate these six tiles, based on cylindrical or spherical images.
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.
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.
A "Web Reader" export of a Twixl publication will generate a set of HTML files that can be deployed on your web site, for easy accessibility on a desktop or notebook.
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.
One the one hand, there is built-in support for analytics in the Twixl Distribution Platform (note that this works for multi-issue apps only).
On the other hand, it is possible to integrate Google Analytics or Localytics.
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.
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…
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 or Localytics.
Localytics has the added advantage that it allows you to send push notification messages to a subset of your readers, based on search criteria you define.
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.
Twixl Publisher allows you to gather analytics information for your app.
One the one hand, there is built-in analytics support for all apps on the Twixl Distribution Platform.
On the other hand, it is possible to integrate Google Analytics or Localytics.
Twixl analytics are available on an app level, but also on an article and collection/issue level. They allow you to have a good understanding of how readers interact with your content.
Analytics data can also be exported as a .xls file or, using our API, you can even integrate with your CRM solution and automatically send analytics data to it.
You can send push notifications to all existing 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.
Using Localytics you can also send targeted push notifications, by identifying a subset of your readers depending on certain selection criteria.
Anyone can register for a free 60-day trial account on the Twixl Distribution Platform, and create a test build of a content app.
This pack is available as an option for Twixl Publisher One, Four or Unlimited apps.
We offer both built-in entitlement options as well as the ability to integrate with your own entitlement server.
This feature provides the option to connect your publications to a subscriber or user database.
It allows you to determine who gets access to which publications in your app (restricted access or entitlement).
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. 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.
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.
Technical documentation about how to integrate entitlements is available here.
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:
Canvasflow / TruEdit / vjoon K4 (coming soon) / WoodWing Enterprise & Inception
This pack is available as an extra paid option.
”Automated Content Sources” are also an extra paid option that lets 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.
Every multi-issue subscription (One, Four or Unlimited Apps) includes access to the Twixl Distribution Platform.
Every account includes a bandwidth volume volume per year.
With every subscription renewal, you’ll get the same bandwidth volume again.
Article-based publishing is very bandwidth friendly because the reader only downloads what he reads, which is often not all of the available content.
Using this approach, the bandwidth volume we offer is sufficient for about 95% of our customers.
But in case you run out of bandwidth, we will inform you 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.
Extra purchased bandwidth remains valid as long as you have an active subscription for Twixl Publisher. So gif you don’t use it all during the year, you’ll be able to still use it in the next year.
Create your own test multi-issue application and test the different features the Twixl Distribution Platform (TDP) is offering.
Contact us if you would like to also test the Pro Pack features or if you would need an extended test period.
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