Introduction
When publishers present their content to an audience for purchase, they want to have ultimate control over the look and feel of their storefront. They want to dictate colors, placement of issues, and craft the environment to make it as easy as possible for consumers to purchase products. That’s why WoodWing introduced the HTML Store for its Tablet Publishing Solution.
This white paper will begin with an overview of the Store functionality present in WoodWing’s Reader apps, then discuss some of the advantages provided by the implementation along with specific information on optimization per mobile platform and the ability to embed the Store in the App or host it online.
The Store Functionality
WoodWing’s Tablet Publishing Solution has several options available for content producers when publishing their Apps. The Basic and Standard versions limit the amount of customization available and restricts content to what is embedded in the App. The Pro and Framework versions, however, allow publishers to connect their digital magazine with WoodWing’s hosted Content Delivery Server (CDS). The CDS contains all the content available for purchase or subscription. To see the issues available for purchase, users simply tap a Buy button in the Reader App that brings up a Store screen. It is this Store screen which is now coded in HTML.
HTML’s Advantages Starting with version 1.8 of the iPad Reader App, and present in the 1.0 version of the Android Reader App, WoodWing made its Store interface customizable via HTML. This means that the same skills used by your current web staff can now be used to style and design the HTML Store, allowing you to reuse existing personnel for tablet publishing purposes.
Customization can be as simple as changing a few colors and background images or can go as far as completely redesigning the interface using HTML, Javascript and CSS. WoodWing ships a perfectly usable Store by default, but if publishers want to differentiate their apps from others, HTML represents a perfect medium from which to operate.
Optimization Per Platform
The Store files are provided as simple HTML, CSS, and Javascript files. And while HTML is a universal language for online communication, browsers can still differ in their rendering of web pages. That’s why WoodWing ships three themes with its HTML Store: a set of pages for iOS devices, a set of pages for Android devices, and a default set of pages that can be used for other platforms.
Embedded or Online
If a publisher has several App platforms that they operate, they may want to consolidate the storefront to a hosted web server for easier maintenance and operation. That’s why WoodWing lets the HTML Store be hosted on a server external to the App itself. An embedded store is the default configuration, and it allows the user to bring up the store even when they’re not connected to the Internet. But WoodWing allows publishers to direct visitors to a hosted store if they have an active Internet connection. This lets publishers make changes to their Store instantly without having to push an update of their Reader App to customers.
Summary
WoodWing’s HTML Store functionality gives publishers the power to customize their shop appearance using the same simple and powerful language they use to present their websites. And with pages and CSS provided for multiple platforms, publishers don’t need to worry about their shop not looking quite right because of a platform’s browser. The ability to host their Store on an online server means that publishers don’t need to update their Reader Apps just because they want to change the color of a background. With all these features, WoodWing shows that it keeps the publisher in mind when developing new functionality and makes it as easy as possible.
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© 2011 WoodWing Software BV. All rights reserved.
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