When I create a book in iBA the pages look exactly as I want them in landscape but when I go to portrait everything dissappears and I'm left with a blank page with the title at the top. I am doing a dry run with a few images and text boxes under a basic template. When I Cut/Paste items things look good until I go to portrait.
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What is happening, and how do I work with the program to make the book work both ways.
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BB
iMac, Mac OS X (10.7)
Do your editing in portrait, and formatting in landscape. Media will always be sidebar thumbnails in landscape, when you click on them, however, they become full screen. You do have control over the placement. There is a thing in the toolbar to change between floating, inline, and anchored; floating allows you to move them around where you want them to be. With anchored, there is a target-looking anchor in the text. Change it to floating, move it, then anchor it if you want. You might have to change orientations to change to floating.
Landscape is the better mode. With portrait you get supllemental material (images, etc.) in the sidebar. Try adding some more content and compare the orientations.
Also noticed that the search function behaves differently in portrait mode: you cannot jump to the page where the result was found by clicking on the result. This only works in portrait mode (in my case anyway). Conclusion: the difference between portrait and landscape in iBooks Author is not just the orientation.
In landscape mode, can you put a table? In portrait mode you can see it but in lnadscape is gonne.
OK, I can almost buy the fact that Landscape is the better mode. However, if this was truly WYSIWYG I would have hoped that if I went from landscape to portrait that everything would still be visable. But it goes away...
Xavier, I am just to opposite, I put a table (in this case many tables) and they all dissappear when I go to portrait. It looks to me like there is a fatal flaw with transitioning from one mode to the other.
Bomber, I'm with you. I think this IS a MAJOR flaw in the programming of iBooks Author. I spent hours and hours formatting an iBook, only to discover everything disappears when the book is turned to portrait mode. I can't in good conscience try to market a book that doesn't work in one of the two iPad orientations.
Is anyone else having this problem. Is there anywhere this can be reported as a potential bug?
Portrait has its restrictions for sure but if you don't like your content in that mode - Set the book so it can only be displayed in Landscape
Lots of people do it and its more than acceptable
Earworm, the issue is if you format the book for either landscape or portrait the book will not look right in the opposite orientation. I can make a book in portrait or I can make it in landscape, but it will not play well in both orientations. I guess I'll have to wait and hope for a fix.
skinnerbox wrote:
Is there anywhere this can be reported as a potential bug?
I understand that - you are aware you can set your book to only publish in Landscape?
Document Inspector > Disable Portrait Orientation
In my book the Media Widget is only visible in landscape mode. I can't insert it on any page in portrait mode. This is the case for video or audio content.
Is this the case for you as well ?
Yes - I can only insert media in Landscape mode
Portrait displays it as an icon but I've no control over placement
I was encountering this problem, but discovered that if I preserve the formatting of one of the templates (i.e., don't delete the placeholders for text, etc.) that the media appear in the portrait mode (and can be played). They do show up in the left margin as a thumbnail (this is the way it was designed) but then when you tap on it, it plays in full screen.
Portrait mode is meant as a reader format where only the text in the linked (important, linked only!!) boxes appears as one continuous page. If you want things to appear there, you have to have them in the linked boxes. Some elements like the photo gallery are moved to the side while other elements like tables just disappear. To keep the ones that disappear, cut and paste them into the linked text box. Took me some time to figure that out.
Landscape vs Portrait
