 Key Information
Keep your eBook projects simple. Avoid complex layouts and formatting, only use simple tables and don't use invisible topics. Only a..z, A..Z, 0..9 and _ are permitted in topic IDs in eBooks!
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About ePUB 3.0
The ePUB 3.0 format introduced in Help+Manual 9 is fully backwards compatible with ePUB 2.0. Even older ePUB readers can open and display an ePUB 3.0 eBook. There is no break in versions or any minimum requirement. However, ePUB 3.0 offers more freedom in page design.
Help+Manual now has additional formatting settings for ePUB. This includes an editable Table of Contents template and an editable HTML page template. These are similar to the corresponding templates in WebHelp, but you should be aware that the formatting options in eBooks are still quite limited compared to HTML web pages. Avoid complex layout and formatting. Large and complex tables and tables containing images should be considered to be toxic, because they will almost always destroy your layout.
Before generating ePUB eBooks you need to install a viewer for previewing the results on your Windows machine. There are currently only two viewer programs that provide good results for this on Windows: The free Calibre program and Digital Editions from Adobe.
We now strongly recommend using Calibre. It is an excellent tool and supports a wide range of different eBook formats very well, including both ePUB and the Amazon Kindle/Mobi format that you can now also generate with Help+Manual. Adobe Digital Editions only supports ePUB and is rather dated and limited compared to Calibre. Also, Digital Editions was recently found to be  spying on users and collecting their data without telling them.
Calibre download page
If you want to use Adobe Digital Editions it is also free and you can get it here:
Adobe Digital Editions download page
If you plan to target other readers and devices you may also want to get those for testing, of course. See ePUB Resources for more information and sources.
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Styles used in ePUB
Most of the style settings in your project will be used in ePUB eBooks with the exception of the font face (see below). If you have separate style settings defined for screen and print view then the print view settings will be used in ePUB.
You can't choose your font faces for most readers
Apple iBooks® and many other eBook readers use their own font faces and may ignore the font settings in your project. Your text will be displayed using the font setting in the reader. Some eBook readers allow the users to change fonts for their viewing pleasure, but you have no control over that.
Some readers support font embedding
Adobe Digital Editions and some other eBook readers will display your font faces if you embed them in the reader. However, this makes your ePUB files much bigger and you must have permission to distribute the fonts from the font copyright holders! See Managing Fonts in eBooks for details.
Variable font size
Users want to be able to change the font size in the reader. To make this possible you must set your font size encoding to either percent or ems in . Setting the font size encoding to pixels or points will make the fonts fixed size in some readers, which is not what you want in ePUB.
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Usually, you don't need to make any changes to the HTML page template for ePUB output. It is already set up for maximum compatibility with Apple iBooks® and a wide range of other eBook readers with ePUB support.
Edit the ePUB page template at your own risk:
If you want to make adjustments to the template you can edit it in . However, do edit it unless you are familiar with the ePUB requirements, which are very strict.
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The ePUB eBook standard is open, free and fully documented in the International Digital Publishing Forum. Help+Manual produces standard ePUB source files that you can also edit and process manually and with other programs for editing and producing ePUB.
Accessing the source files:
When you publish to ePUB the source files are automatically written to a new folder in your project folder called:
~tmpepub
If you turn off the Delete temporary files after publishing option in the Publish dialog page you can edit these files directly with any text editor provided you observe the OPF specifications for ePUB eBooks. However, note that Apple iBooks® is extremely quirky, so get information on its requirements before trying to create iBooks® ePubs yourself!
Making an ePUB file from the source files:
An ePUB eBook is actually a normal zip archive with the extension .epub instead of the normal .zip extension. After editing your ePUB source files you can create a valid ePUB eBook by copying the contents of the ~tmpepub folder to a zip archive and then changing the extension to .epub.
Important: Make sure that the sub-folders are included in the zip archive! Some zip programs will store all the files in the zip without internal folders if you are not careful.
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