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updated: 2008-04-24

Contents
The Cover Page
Cover page in IDPF 1.0
Cover page in IDPF 2.0

The Cover Page

The recommended cover size is 600x800 pixels (500 pixels on the smaller side is an absolute minimum)

A cover should NOT be an HTML page with an image in it. The Mobipocket file format can store an image as the cover of a book. You can use the "cover" feature to add a cover page in Creator. The cover page should be a color picture in JPEG format.

Logical covers allow the Mobipocket reader to display a user-friendly library.

If you are writing your .OPF by hand, you must know that the IDPF standard unfortunetely does not provide for cover pages. You have to use Mobipocket extensions to specify the cover page. These extensions have been designed so that your documents will still validate as valid IDPF 1.0 or 2.0 documents.

IDPF 1.0

The cover is specified in the .OPF file using the following syntax:

<x-metadata> <EmbeddedCover>my_cover_art.jpg</EmbeddedCover> </x-metadata>

IDPF 2.0

The IDPF 1.0 extended metadata syntax is no longer allowed in the IDPF 2.0 standard. The following syntax must be used instead:

Use the meta tag in the metadata section to reference an image manifest item containing the JPEG cover. Underlined elements must be named as in the sample below:

<metadata> <meta name="cover" content="my-cover-image" /> </metadata> ... <manifest> <item href="MyCoverImage.jpg" id="my-cover-image" media-type="image/jpeg" /> </manifest>

We also added logic to get rid cleanly of the HTML cover (normal HTML page with an image in it) people usually add because the logical cover is not part of the the IDPF specification.

If the HTML cover item is marked linear="no" in the spine
AND there is a guide item of type="cover" pointing to it
AND there is a logical cover specified in a <meta name="cover"> tag

then, the HTML cover is discarded (rejected at the end of the document). This makes sure that the user reading the book normally from the beginning does not see the cover twice. It also makes sure that whatever links existed in the content to the HTML cover page, they will still work.

In short, if you want to have an HTML cover page, in addition to the proper logical cover, add the following tags in your .OPF:

<spine> <itemref idref="my-html-cover" linear="no" /> </spine> ... <manifest> <item id="my-html-cover" href="cover.xml" media-type="application/xhtml+xml" /> </manifest> ... <guide> <reference type="cover" title="Cover Image" href="cover.xml" /> <guide>

The following sample is in .epub format. To see inside, rename the .epub as .zip and open it normally. .epub is just an archive of IDPF2.0 source files:

Download Sample