iPad iBooks: page-break-after/inside/before NOT working?

[philx]

Hey community,

is anybody out there who could give my his experience regarding to the effect of the page-break-after/before/inside property in ePubs displayed on iBooks? I'm using the actual revision of iBooks, where the property/methods seems to get ignored (e.g. style="page-break-before:avoid;").

I read a lot on the net, i found out that iBooks was able to process the page-break settings properly in the past for some time. But what about the situation today?

Thanks a lot!

Phil

[AlexBell]

Welcome to the forum.

According to Elizabeth Castro in her excellent EPUB Straight to the Point from Peachpit Press this is a known bug. She gives some work arounds, but as I don't design for iBooks I don't remember what they are.

Even though I don't design for iBooks I found this book immensely helpful for other aspects of ebook design.

[philx]

Hi Alex,

thank you very much for welcoming me and your quick reply!

The mentioned book from Liz Castro maybe is the right choice for me. I'm just worried about it's content in actual context. Liz published the book in 2011 and I assume that iBooks got updated since then a hundred times. Liz already blogged it some time ago, that functionality varies from update to update. That's what an update should do, but in my opinion more under the aspect of adding features, than of dropping them. However ... I'm not sure if the - for sure genious - book is up to date regarding to my special interest in page breaks. Maybe I will give it a try.

Thank you again for reply!

Best regards
Phil

[dgatwood]

The page-break-before: avoid value doesn't work in WebKit, FireFox, or IE, either.

For page-break-before and page-break-after, you should generally assume that the only fully supported values are always, auto, and inherit.

In most renderers, the values right, and left usually behave like always.

The only place where I've ever seen avoid supported is in the page-break-inside property. I've never seen a browser that supports it in -before or -after properties.

So if you need to prevent a page break between two elements, the best way is to wrap both elements in a div and set page-break-inside: avoid on that outer div. I realize that this isn't necessarily what you're trying to achieve—you might be content with just guaranteeing that there are a couple of widow lines from the previous paragraph on the same page as an image, for example—but it is the closest approximation that works at all currently.

[philx]

Hi dgatwood,

thank you very much for the information! It's quite interesting, I didn't know that webkit is as restrictive as you are telling me. Very valuable information for further work. Currently I'm not able to continue testing, but will have a close look at the things as soon as possible.

You're right, mostly I'm trying to guarantee that there are always a couple of lines after headlines, but I'm also dealing with images and corresponding captions for which I already used the page-break-inside:avoid; property for an outer div. But it didn't seem to have any effect in iBooks. Unfortunately ... Maybe I have done something wrong way, but I'm afraid that iBooks is just kind of hardheaded in that context. I'll give it one more try anyway.

So, many thanks to you, have a nice weekend!

Phil

[AlexBell]

Originally Posted by philx

Hi Alex,

thank you very much for welcoming me and your quick reply!

The mentioned book from Liz Castro maybe is the right choice for me. I'm just worried about it's content in actual context. Liz published the book in 2011 and I assume that iBooks got updated since then a hundred times. Liz already blogged it some time ago, that functionality varies from update to update. That's what an update should do, but in my opinion more under the aspect of adding features, than of dropping them. However ... I'm not sure if the - for sure genious - book is up to date regarding to my special interest in page breaks. Maybe I will give it a try.

Thank you again for reply!

Best regards
Phil

Thanks, Phil

You're right of course; iBooks has come a long way since she published her book. She has a blog at www.pigsgourdsandwikis.com that may have more up to date information.

[philx]

Originally Posted by AlexBell

Thanks, Phil

You're right of course; iBooks has come a long way since she published her book. She has a blog at www.pigsgourdsandwikis.com that may have more up to date information.

Hi Alex,

it's funny. I knew Liz' blog partially, but was not able to find further information for the page breaking difficulty. While thinking to myself the display:inline-block property came to my mind. I don't know where it came from, probably just heard it somewhen. So I gave it a try on google and got redirected to ... Liz Castro ... where I could find detailed information:

http://www.pigsgourdsandwikis.com/20...r-yes-you.html

It's not an elegant way in my opinion, because under bad circumstances 75 % of the viewer's page can be empty, but in the specific book it fits my requirements. Currently I prefer some additional space over numerous detached headlines and captions.

Maybe thats helpful for some other users, when they get angry about the page-break-inside property not working on specific viewers.

Many thanks to you and dgatwood for your help – crowned with success!

Bye,
Phil

[AlexBell]

Many thanks to you for the link. I'll try out the technique.