The markets are moving at a fast pace, user’s demands are rising, (mobile) operating systems are changing rapidly and the variety in communication channels are exploding. Hi Geert, as Product Manager for CHILI Publisher explain what is important for this new 4 version. Geert said “CHILI Publish has proven to provide enterprise class tools for document editing. With version 4, we will continue to do so. With a fast moving market and technology, it’s our mission to provide future proof technology. CHILI Publisher needs to be integrated, so we need to keep up with the newest technologies”.

This means the well-known editor, can be integrated into your portal will still do the job, with additional features. Demand has been huge to support HTML5 as well. Today, we release a brand new HTML5 editor, based on the same technology. But we also want to be ready when « the next technology » surfaces. This release includes the first version of the new HTML5 editor and this new foundation allows us to quickly adapt to any emerging technology.

As of today, CHILI Publisher 4 is available for download for existing customers. New customers will also get this latest version upon installation. What you get with CHILI Publisher is a suite of tools: The Editor, The Backoffice, The Document composition engine and The API. In version 4 is new the 3D Models, mapping your documents on 3D modelled objects; integration with DirectSmile, to use personalized images; a brand new, future proof framework, and new CHILI Publisher converter plugin with live preflighting and "Fix it for me". Also, new with this version, is that the CHILI Editor is now available in a new HTML5 flavour. This means you can now choose — when you integrate an editor in your portal — which version you want to offer the end-users, depending on their needs and the platform they will work on.

Today, we see two kinds of editors online. Small, purpose-built editors, that only serve a specific need for that solution. Secondly there are the more generic editors, using a round-trip to a server to generate a preview image of your document. That approach works, but is using a lot of bandwidth and time. Every update needs a roundtrip to the server. CHILI Publisher doesn't rely on a roundtrip. We built a full customizable editor, in the client. The document is generated and edited in the browser, in real time.

The process of converting your existing documents, in Adobe InDesign, is still the same. But with this version, we created a new set of plugins. First of all, there is the CHILI Converter plugin. That plugin will take your InDesign document, and convert it to CHILI Publisher. Some of the features you used in Adobe InDesign might not convert. Therefore we now have the option "Fix it for me" in the CHILI Live Preflight plugin. This plugin will help you make decisions on how to best design your document for online usage.

The CHILI Live Preflight plugin offers the option to warn on possible issues in real-time. Next to that, you can also preflight the entire document at any time. Last but not least, there is the CHILI Data Manager plugin which will manage the metadata in your files. If you need to keep metadata in the file, this plugin will help you organize them.

We provide you with the ability to integrate our editor in your solution, the way you want to use it in your solution. That applies to the HTML5 editor as well. You have the full freedom to create your UI around the editor.The HTML5 editor will work on all browsers that support HTML5. However, tablet devices for example, have a different user interaction. Therefore, solutions aimed at tablet users, will have to act differently, also depending on the application you have in mind for your end-users.

Not all end-users can imagine how printed collateral will look in real life. In previous versions we covered part of that challenge with 3D Folding, a way to view your document in a folded way. With version 4, we took the concept to a new level. You can now map your 2D documents on to 3D models. To accomplish this, we use collada files, an open source 3D XML description. Once you imported your model, you can assign CHILI Publisher Documents or assets to each element in your model.

It will help if you have somebody with a good feeling for technology. The models we can import can be made with the usual 3D software tools (3D Max, Maya, Google Sketchup, Esko tools, ...) and exported to a collada file. Once the document is imported in CHILI Publisher, the interface will guide you to map your documents on the model. There is a lot to show you. Therefore we planned a range of webinars you can subscribe to. These webinars will give you the best overview of the possibilities.