Problem with Apple Books Default View (EPUB 3)

[Shane.Klink]

I am a freelance graphic designer and a long term client of mine decided he wanted to release a series of ebooks for his business so i have taken it upon myself to teach myself sigil, css, html, and so forth over the last couple weeks to put together his first book.

He loves ALMOST everything about it. The only real problem he has is how apple books (his prefered standard) views the image by default. So I went in and forced some things in the code such as using his font of choice and some control over things like spread to try to make him happy. The only thing left is his complaint that when the file is openned for the first time it appears in two-page-view with two columns (which is a problem due to some heirarchial coding examples he has in the book not being legible.

I know that the user end solution is to just boost the font size up one time in the app and we're good, but I've spent several days now trying everything I can think of to alter that value by default. for such a simple thing I have fallen all the way to considering pre-paginaiton, but that would require a full rebuild of the book and if we're not going to enjoy the customization of reflowable media we should just build the thing in pdf if we want control.

I've been altering meta data and odf pages for three nights straight and i'm losing my mind. please please please, does anyone have any idea how to just have it open up in single-page-view on first open? I looked into center-column and everything I can think of and he's started to get impatient.

Thank you,
Shane Klink

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Shane.Klink

I am a freelance graphic designer and a long term client of mine decided he wanted to release a series of ebooks for his business so i have taken it upon myself to teach myself sigil, css, html, and so forth over the last couple weeks to put together his first book.

He loves ALMOST everything about it. The only real problem he has is how apple books (his prefered standard) views the image by default. So I went in and forced some things in the code such as using his font of choice and some control over things like spread to try to make him happy. The only thing left is his complaint that when the file is openned for the first time it appears in two-page-view with two columns (which is a problem due to some heirarchial coding examples he has in the book not being legible.

I know that the user end solution is to just boost the font size up one time in the app and we're good, but I've spent several days now trying everything I can think of to alter that value by default. for such a simple thing I have fallen all the way to considering pre-paginaiton, but that would require a full rebuild of the book and if we're not going to enjoy the customization of reflowable media we should just build the thing in pdf if we want control.

I've been altering meta data and odf pages for three nights straight and i'm losing my mind. please please please, does anyone have any idea how to just have it open up in single-page-view on first open? I looked into center-column and everything I can think of and he's started to get impatient.

Thank you,
Shane Klink

Not sure if this is a solution for you but I noticed several references to iOS/iPadOS 14 and single page view being broken. One person mentioned the upcoming iOS 14.2 release (now in beta) correcting this issue. A sample reference is found at: iBooks single page view gone after upgrade to iPad OS 14.