Tessa Blakeley Silver

A professional and not-so-professional peek.

SXSWi 2013: Designing eBooks With Web Standards

Mar 7, 2013 | Portfolio

SXSWi 2013: Designing eBooks With Web Standards
Standard ebook publishing requires ramping up on knowledge about various ebook formats, and then becoming familiar with proprietary ebook publishing channels like Kindle, iBooks, etc. Wouldn’t it be easier to use web standards to build ebooks, and then either serve them on the web or distribute them via mobile app stores? If you already know and use web standards (HTML, CSS, JavaScript), ebook publishing is within your reach. Come to this session to explore frameworks and techniques that enable you to design and publish ebooks, monetize them, and distribute them to a variety of devices and platforms.

We’ll look at all the major eBook apps/platforms but will primarily work with the open EPUB format and export to the MOBI format.

#html5epub | #SXSWi | #sxsw

 

Downloads:

  • The ePub “slide deck” – Finally!
  • Sigil
  • Kindle Previewer
  • video-audio – updated!
  • bootstrap-svg-sample – updated!
  • jquery-jqui-sample – updated!
  • The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – NEW!

    This test comes from a very long HTML file provided by The Project Gutenberg. Drag and dropped right into Calibre and converted to ePub.

    A quick look at this .ePub in Sigil reveals that multi-section pages were created and the TOC and metadata is quite well formed. You’ll note the title page was broken into two pages a bit oddly. So, for those of you converting your manuscripts (especially from Word -to-> HTML -to-> ePub via Calibre) – just be prepared to do a touch of “post clean up” in a tool like Sigil for the best end user experience!

  • geo-location-sample – NEW! – Update 2013.03.15:

    Well, shoot. I can’t actually get this working in iBooks (or any js enabled app – that’s not the browser on the iPad). I’ll put together a full article, but for now – it seems that despite having access to geolocation – the iPad refuses to let the: navigator.geolocation.getCurrentPosition(yourCustomFunct); actually kick off (you can play with my alternate test that breaks down the geo checks step-by-step and note where it “hangs”).

    For now, you can do what Liz Castro does with her Barcelona book and at least link people out into the maps app and/or browser (again, be sure to just buy her entire Complete EPUB set – well worth the $40 bucks if you’re serious about web standards ePub, you’ll get the Barcelona book with the set)

    Also: Liza Daly (of course) has a geolocation sample (though, I haven’t had time to convert it to ePub and test it, it appears it might not work either).

    Here’s to upcoming eReader upgrades (hopefully arriving with the full support of ePub3)!

Note: This page is actively updated! SXSWi is over but the fun continues – Follow me: @tessaract or get results for #html5epub for the latest on this page.

Relevant info:

  • When: 03/12/2013 3:30 PM – 6:00 PM
  • Where: AT&T Conference Center – Classroom 203 – 1900 University Ave
  • What to bring:
    • Laptop – (if you’d like work along with the examples – you can also download Sigil and the Kindle Previewer tools) –
    • Sigil – Sigil is a multi-platform EPUB ebook editor.
    • Kindle Previewer – This software allows younto convert EPUB format to MOBI and preview it in all the different Kindle Readers.
    • HTML/CSS/JS editor of your choice
    • iPads, Kindles and Nooks (of all flavors)! – Hopefully at the end, you’ll have a little something personal to open up and test out in an eReader of choice!

     

    Prep & Materials:

    • Code/HTML Samples: Download to the left!
    • Slide Deck: Download to the left!

     

    Post workshop: A few lessons learned

    • For those of you using Twitter’s Bootstrap: be sure any CSS styling the library adds doesn’t confuse readers if JS functionality isn’t available (for example, I’d programatically add in the btn, tab etc. classes and other styles indicating dynamic features, only if the modernizr js class is available)
    • Fun little surprise: The Kobo reader on the iPad will kick off JavaScript if it’s on the first page, but won’t after the first page – interesting…
    • While geolocation services seem to be available to iBooks (and Kobo) the apps (or perhaps the iPad OS itself) will not allow any of the geolocation functions to initiate. (This could be a “security feature”. I’ll research a bit more)
    • Calibre – not too shabby at converting loooong html files over to a nicely parsed multi-sectioned ePub!

     

    The official run down:

     

    About me:

    Tessa Silver Sr Interactive Developer Capella University

    I design and program. Online learning, mobile apps (and combining the two) are my main interests. I’m a Senior Interactive Developer for Capella University, I write for Packt Publishing and various other blogs. I also create media and apps (in my oh-so-copious spare time) via my company hyper3media LLC (pronounced: hyper-cube-media).