What’s your entry point to test designing iPad apps? (kind of part 2)

Digital Publishing, QuarkXPress 93 Comments

After I posted the blog entry “What’s your entry point to get your own app in the App Store?” I received several emails from designers asking how they can test creating designs for the iPad. A typical email was this:

 

"[...] thank you very much for your post about the minimal entry point
for submitting apps, very intriguing.

What I am interested in though is how the whole thing works.
Do I have to pay Quark money to simply test [designing for the iPad]
or is there a test version available?[...]"

 

Yes, of course, you can test creating layouts for the iPad (AVE) for free and even see them on your iPad. You don’t even need to create an App for that (which, once you decide to publish, you can do later).

Here are the steps (for Mac and Windows):

  1. On your physical iPad download the free “Quark Issue Previewer” (http://goo.gl/JK8tD) from Apple’s App Store.
  2. Start the free “Quark Issue Previewer” and click on the little wheel in the upper left corner.
  3. When you “enable transfers” you will see an http:// address there (something like http://192.168.0.99:8080):

    Tab Quark Issue Previewer to Enable Transfers from QuarkXPress to your iPad
    Sideloading iPad layouts out of QuarkXPress
  4. Note that address and leave the Quark Issue Previewer running. Make sure that you are in the same WLAN as your Mac or PC.
  5. Now you can start designing:
    Use QuarkXPress 9.1 (Test Drive, Edu or Full version) to create an iPad layout (either enriching a Print layout or using a dedicated App Studio layout) and enrich it with interactivity.
  6. When you’re ready to test ,open the “Export as AVE” dialog  (File > Export > Layout as AVE).
  7. In the Export dialog, check “Preview in” and paste the address from step 4) into the export dialog. Click SAVE:

    Export from QuarkXPress directly to iPad
    Export layouts out of QuarkXPress directly onto your iPad

Now the AVE will magically appear on your iPad (within the Quark Issue Previewer) and you can start testing your design and your added interactivity. If you want to improve it, just repeat step 5, 6 and 7 to update your layout on your iPad.

And to come back to the original question, “Yes, that’s testing and it is all free of charge.”