May 10, 2011 7:48:15 AM PDT
Thanks so much for this. It's just what I needed.
May 14, 2011 8:33:46 AM PDT
Gerald,
I loved your presentation. Thanks for being so willing to share. One concern I have with ePub is the lack of devices that take advantage of its potential. Any word on when iBooks will be a Mac App?
May 16, 2011 7:40:57 PM PDT
Ah, I'm afraid I don't know if or when iBooks will run on Macbooks. Needless to say I'd love to see iBooks released for Mac OS X.
I'm hopeful ePub 3.0 will lead to broader acceptance of JavaScript and HTML5 in eBooks -- after all, there's nothing in these interactive eBooks ePub 3.0 frowns upon -- so my best guess is that other readers will begin to support interactivity eventually.
-Gerald
June 10, 2011 4:57:18 AM PDT
Thanks for this - I'm really excited to see the interactive part. I've started on this quest as well and want to try to get teachers and students in our 22 public school districts producing rich media and interactive ePUBs. The Open University's 'Open Learn' section is the first place I recommend in my video for folks to go -- If anyone is interested in looking or especially commenting on it, you can find the first video and ePUB book example here:
http://itunes.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewPodcast?id=442784998
I've only scratched the surface so far so I value any feedback - but boy is this exciting! Unfortunately I am already committed to a conference on June 22nd, but I cannot wait to view the archive of your webcast.
THANK YOU for sharing your work on this - it is important and I will be spreading the word around our districts!
-Dave Solon
Instructional Technology Coordinator
Lancaster-Lebanon IU 13
Lancaster, PA
June 10, 2011 6:23:47 AM PDT
Regarding the need for an ePub reader comparable to iBooks on MacOS X, I second that emotion. Currently, ePub is the only media type supported by the iTunes.app and iTunes U that cannot be "played" directly or indirectly (a la PDF) via the iTunes.app. That needs to change.
In the interim, one must sync to iBooks on iOS in order to get good feedback on one's writing. Perhaps iCloud will provide some relief but I really think that nothing less than an app will do. My MO requires rapid switching between the views of content creator and content consumer.
There is also the EPUBReader plug-in for Firefox, calibre and the Sigil and Adobe Digital Editions apps. Those alternatives don't yet support audio, video, etc. but the finalization of EPUB 3 should change that or at least I hope that it will.
June 10, 2011 8:48:20 AM PDT
Hi Dave - thanks for getting in touch! I love the Creatures of the Caribbean eBook. I'll post a link to the Bookbin authoring tool when it's ready to share (very soon now I hope), which will be cross-platform.
Frank - I haven't tried iCloud yet, but Dropbox already offers excellent iBooks support. It can't preview the books within the Dropbox app but it will offer to open synced eBooks in iBooks. For quick checks I really like the tiny eBook viewer application that ships with Calibre. It uses Webkit, it has page turning of sorts, and best of all it will open HTML5 activities in a new browser tab.
-Gerald
June 21, 2011 12:41:12 AM PDT
Yes, Calibre has a usable ePub reader built-in plus it makes a mighty fine OPDS server if you have a fixed IP and access through your institution's firewall. You can do OPDS via DropBox, too, but the DropBox solutions I've seen so far are not as good as what Calibre can do. Another WebKit option is Ibis Reader from Threepress Consulting which is constantly being improved. Still, iBooks is my preferred test bench since it supports, audio, video and Javascript to some as yet unknown degree.
