InDesign epub conversion. When is black not black pt 2

Last week I posted about an issue I’d been having with the css generated by InDesign cs6. When I tested files on the Kindle for iPad and then Kindle Fire, I found that my black text wouldn’t revert out in the night theme. (It’s fine in iBooks and Kobo)

After some investigation I discovered that InDesign seemed to have changed how it expressed black in the css.

css generated from InDesign cs5.5 and cs6

This is the css generated from the same document – the one on the left in cs5.5 on the right cs6. Notice the color value. I hadn’t changed anything in InDesign except open the file in cs6.

Colour swatch options when creating stylesheets

This is the colour menu in the paragraph styles dialogue. You have a choice of black and registration to create black. Black is the default (at least it is on my set up).

Css generated using ‘black’ and ‘registration’

And this is what I got when I set up one style using ‘registration’ black and one using ‘black’.

Interesting…

Now I know how to fix it, it’s not a problem, but it had me scratching my head for a bit.

 

Edit:

Below is a screenshot of the night theme on the kindle mac desktop app and the accompanying css. The text styled as ‘body’ is not showing up and has a color value of #1a1818 which is what InDesign has generated when I used the epub export dialogue. The other text has had the css edited in Dreamweaver to colour:inherit and no color value.

kindle for mac black screen and css

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Kindle Fire HD and e-production

The main reason I bought the Kindle Fire HD is so that I can test files for my conversion clients.

In a recent post I talked about the issues the new Kindle iPad app brought up for my conversion workflow (mobi7). InDesign will create css with pure black coding if you use the registration swatch rather than the black one (which is totally counterintuitive if you are used to print, but there you go). But I’ve found that the iPad and now the Fire’s night theme doesn’t work if you use that either. I’ve changed the color value to ‘inherit’ and that seems to work. I need to experiment more with using a master css file.

I’ve also found that it’s best to strip out any references to fonts if you want to use the font selection the KF gives you. It doesn’t seem happy with embedded fonts anyway – it just uses one of its fonts – usually the most ugly one! I’m possibly doing something wrong, but this has been my experience using the inDesign to ePub to Kindlegen/Previwer method.

I’ve tried the Kindle conversion plugin for inDesign and that’s been a dead loss for me. It won’t generate a toc and the change font size feature wouldn’t work. A definite no no for the Kindle user experience!

 

Experiments with Kindle Fire HD

On Friday my Kindle Fire HD was unceremoniously shoved through my letter box.

The box

Its attractive packaging and seemed to cushion the device’s fall onto the tiled floor in my porch.

You open the box by pulling the perforated cardboard tab.

Kindle Fire HD packaging open

The Kindle Fire HD comes with an USB cord and an instruction leaflet. It switches on on the short side. The button is recessed and not easy to see, so you won’t keep turning it on by mistake.

It’s already pre-registered to your Amazon account.

Kindle Fire HD home screen

Notice it says Jill’s 2nd Kindle at the top of the screen. Items you’ve looked at appear in the carousel. I gather this is a modified Android OS – it’s certainly similar to my Sony S tablet. There’s a free app of the day at the moment. Jamie Oliver today.

Very gratifyingly, the Adobe DPS folio I experimented with in the summer loaded on to this straight away once I loaded the Adobe content viewer app.

Adobe DPS folio

The screen is lovely. These photos don’t do it justice at all. New users get, I think, 5 gig of cloud storage (and a months free Amazon Prime, incidently). This is the gallery screen for the cloud storage. You can download to the device to view offline or you can sideload photos from your desktop.

Kindle Fire HD Photos screen

Books look good. There is now a night and sepia theme (like iBooks) and a text-to-speech facility. It’s a female, American voice, though, and I haven’t found a way to change it.

Kindle Fire HD text to speech facility

 

Just need to get it a cover now, so I can chuck it in my bag of gadgets.