Most technical writers will create their HTML, PDF, XML, and EPUB documents on a desktop, laptop, or netbook then test them with popular browsers and viewers available on their Mac, PC, or Linux OS. There's no arguing, however, that the majority of most digital documents today are consumed on a smartphone or tablet running either iOS and Android. Take a ride on the subway or visit any international airport and you would understand why digital publishing professionals should start learning to think with these mobile platforms in mind.
The great thing about digital documents is that their platform independent - the bad news is that you would still need to consider layout, speed, and reading experience. Anyone who purchased the first-generation ereaders would know that large PDFs fared pretty badly on devices like earlier Amazon Kindle readers and the Sony PRS series. Moreover, EPUB didn't flow as it should back then. Today, with Google Nexus 7, exceptional Android apps, and thousands of iOS apps available today, it seems that opening documents isn't as consistent as you would expect. In fact, even using the latest Adobe InDesign to produce digital books is no guarantee your reader is going to view your document on a tablet or smartphone using a well-designed app. You might as well have just saved your money and used open source software such as Calibre or Sigil for Linux to produce your EPUB.
Would your department need to purchase an HTC Smartphone, iPad, Kindle Fire, Samsung Galaxy, and a Windows Phone just to test your document on various platforms? Of course not, but in a recent Adobe convention, the presenters certainly tried to display their documents in as many devices as possible to prove that using Adobe Creative Suite CS6 will ensure visual consistency. That said, there are a few applications out there that can simulate how a document would look on X or Y device. However, for this article, we'll focus on free apps available for the iPod Touch that can open the most common type of files you might export your work to. The iPod Touch is cheaper than an iPhone but has pretty much the same screen dimensions and the same available set of apps. Obviously, the list below aren't the best apps out there but they are free and they don't need access to the Internet to work. The second part of this article, on the other hand, will deal with a handful of apps for the budding technical writer he may find useful on his iPod Touch.
Testing and Viewing Documents
1. Apple Safari browser - Love or hate Safari, iOS rules the world at the moment and many users are experiencing the same restrictions as Windows users did with Internet Explorer 5 so many years ago. Preinstalled with my iPod touch, it's the first browser I test my document with before moving on to others.
2. Google Chrome - Currently the most popular browser on iOS, Google Chrome is always a good testing environment for code and the latest web standards.
3. Opera - If your markup displays properly in Opera, you're good to go. Opera's small market share is somewhat misleading, but testing your markup in Opera is essential if you will be producing for a European market.
4. ViewCHM - CHM, Windows' help file format, is no longer as prevalent as it used to be and most companies don't produce .chm files anymore. However, there's a reason why Adobe hasn't discontinued Adobe RoboHelp yet. ViewCHM is a simple though unwieldy CHM viewer. It doesn't seem right to be reading CHM files on an Apple device, but there are ebooks out there that are still being exported or converted to .chm.
5. iBooks - iBooks isn't the most feature rich document reader but it still supports PDF and EPUB very well. Like Safari, test your PDF and EPUB in iBooks first before moving on to third-party apps.
6. Sidebooks, Stanza, Blue Reader, and Bookman (Lite version no longer available)- Although there are dozens of digital reader apps on iTunes, these are my personal favorite EPUB and PDF readers because unlike Zinio or Amazon you don't need a data plan to use them. All you need to do is upload your PDF or EPUB and view them. They have different approaches to displaying text and images with the paid Bookman standing out among the four. Stanza is no longer a dependable app if you've upgraded to iOS5 but it's still one of the most popular apps out there. The obscure Sidebooks is actually pretty good while Blue Reader can be inconsistent. In general, the iPod Touch will struggle will large PDF files such as those downloaded from Archive.org so if your technical document opens properly in all four of these readers you did your job well.
7. FlexPlayer - This free video player is great for testing out screencasts and tutorials on video. It supports a fairly adequate number of popular file formats. iOS' included video player is probably the best for .mp4 files for the same reason Safari and iBooks should be your priority for HTML and EPUB documents. FlexPlayer surprisingly supports the elusive FLV format on the iPod Touch (though don't try playing the old MPEG standard). For technical writers who are still using Adobe Captivate to produce content, scaling the video size isn't a problem though I recommend exporting to AVI than to Adobe Flash.
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