With the WoodWing World Tour coming to Sydney at the end of November many people have been asking what the difference is between WoodWing's tablet publishing solution and the one from Adobe. Hopefully the following information will help to shed some light on the subject.
Firstly, we need to be absolutely clear that WoodWing and Adobe are not in competition with each other over the Digital Magazine market place. WoodWing has been fully committed to developing tools and solutions for Adobe's InDesign and InCopy publishing platforms since 2000 and this relationship is not about to change. In fact, when the Adobe digital magazine application is finally released later this year, it will be integrated into WoodWing's Enterprise 7.2 workflow.
The main differences between the Adobe solution as it stands right now, and WoodWing lies within the realms of workflow and customisation.
Workflow: A non WoodWing workflow involves very careful planning in the way you manage your files, a significant amount of expertise outside of the design stage, and several more steps than the WoodWing solution. This sort of process can be quite cumbersome for any publisher regardless of size.
With WoodWing Enterprise 7 the creation of the app is simplified, and given back to the designers.
Having a robust workflow managing the filestore and back-end app creation will allow your team more time to concentrate on the rich design elements of your publication; such as slide-shows, hot-spots and proper flowing typography; which is what tablet publishing is all about.
App Customisation: Like WoodWing, Adobe's Digital Content Viewer is a brandable reader application with the capability of displaying design rich content. The WIRED App is a perfect example of this. WoodWing offers a fully customisable Reader App to further enhance the end user experience. Some of the customisations already in use include the ability to start up with a live TV Guide like the Veronica App, custom home pages, live news feeds, database links like the Auto Week App, Widget Wheels for social media sharing like the Sports Illustrated App and Integrated Print Subscriptions like the People App featured below.
WoodWing are investing more than two years worth of man-hours every month developing their tablet solution. There are over forty titles and more than three hundred issues produced with their software already available on iTunes, with many more awaiting Apple's approval. On top of that WoodWing's award-winning solution is multi-channel meaning you can output to print, web, mobile, email, social media AND tablet devices.
So if you want a strong and sophisticated workflow to facilitate the ease of app production, with the choice to use either Adobe's Digital Content Viewer or WoodWing's fully customisable Reader App depending on your client's requirements, and the ability to publish to other channels, then Enterprise 7 is the way to go.
Creative Folks are a WoodWing Gold Authorised Solution Solution Partner for Australia and New Zealand as well as an Adobe Silver Solution Partner. We are here to help you implement whichever solution you decide is right for your business.