If EPUB3 is never fully, widely adopted, is there still wisdom in holding it as the current standard for ebook formats?
Jenny Bullough, Manager of Digital Assets for Harlequin and ebookcraft speaker, investigates.
Ebooks' rotten floor
Our five takeaways from Digital Book World
Lauren Stewart, BookNet Office Manager and in-house Leslie Knope, attended the Digital Book World Conference + Expo this week. Here are five things she learned about data, mobile marketing, and the inevitable takeover of HTML5.
Helping the web and books become better friends
The Digital Publishing Interest Group has been hard at work since June 2013, bringing together the web and digital publishing communities to better understand each other’s needs. Find out what they’ve been up to, and how they’re building a brighter future for both communities in today’s guest post from ebookcraft presenters Tzviya Siegman and Ivan Herman!
Give Node.js a chance
The New Reading Experience: BiB IV
Last week at Books in Browsers IV, Baldur Bjarnason gave a talk titled Interactivity Is What You Do that I kept referring back to over the two days of sessions. He pointed out that interactive media isn’t what you watch, hear or read, but is “composed of the meaningful actions the user takes while interacting with your work.”
There are two affirming ideas in this statement. One is that “meaningful actions” has a wide enough scope to include all behaviour. Second is that producers of interactive works build an entire experience, not simply an object, for an audience.EPUB Validation Made Easy
Having had the opportunity in the last year to help write and edit the EPUB 3 specification, I can commiserate with people who find the process of putting a publication together a little daunting. It can be a challenge to pull all the basic requirements together and verify whether you’ve met them all. Fortunately, there are tools that can help make sure that your coding is correct and that your book will open and work in reading systems. Not surprisingly, the IDPF maintains a free validator called EpubCheck for exactly this purpose.
The tool hasn’t always been the simplest for lay people to use, however; it has a bit of a reputation of being built by geeks for geeks. If that’s been your perception, don’t fret because help is on the way!
Infinite Custom Content Possibilities: BookRiff
PressBooks: Web-First Workflow Just Got Even Easier
EPUB 3.0 Draft Specification Published
Today the IDPF made available the first public draft of the EPUB 3.0 specification (press release).
The IDPF has posted a good overview document to 3.0 that is worth spending a little time with. But here is a brief summary of some of the proposed new ‘features’, or changes, in EPUB 3.0.
