IBooks

Revision as of 09:40, 14 February 2012 by Taftman (Talk | contribs)

iBooks 2 Highlights

runs on all iOS devices
built in dictionary
search/web lookup
highlighting and saving highlighted material (with any color)
underlining feature
able to take notes
All your notes and highlights automatically appear on study cards. Flip them over and find the definition of a glossary term or the note attached to the highlighted passage.
bookmarks the page your on automatically
can download a small sample of a book before purchasing
also stores PDFs
swiping/touching options to make chapter and section navigation easy
pinch and slide to return to Table of Contents
interactive media, diagrams, 3D images, zoom, etc.
Can download updates to textbooks, at no additional charge.

free app
The application includes templates to quickly create books, but users can also drag and drop images and video into the title. To add text, users can drag and drop a Word file, automatically creating sections and headers.
auto formatting
no programming experience needed
Has a built-in tool, Dashcode, for creating widgets.
templates (customizable) OR create one
type or drag/drop
instant text flow
widgets create interactive elements (keynote, 3D, slideshows, can be web-based so always up to date)
portrait or landscape views (portrait = more text-based with thumbnails in margin)
Can export final content to iBooks store, PDF, text
iBooks Author uses VoiceOver technology to make content accessible to those with vision impairments

Positives

Goal = dynamic/adaptive learning
Very helpful as another tool for differentiated education
Creates a very different pricing model for higher education
Reinventing the education publishing value-chain
- born-digital emphasized
Another useful tool to deliver material (one of many outlets)
Building an interactive book using widgets would be much quicker than hand-coding it

Negatives

stand alone – only on apple platform (what about multiple channels?)
missing review component (to share/review before publishing, various people working on it at the same time)
workflow management
web only or desktop view? (not practical for everyone to have iPads)
- should have print, desktop, and mobile
broad audience and publishing (ePub3?)
Publishers who want to use javascript, html, 3D, etc. may still need to find outside help
Does not allow for versioning in the app
Apple would have control over content distributed through the iBookstore.
copyright and permissions problems
Need Mac OS X 10.7.2 or later or higher to download iBooks Author in the supported manner

Fonts are replaced when importing .docx files
Widgets (photo gallery, movie, etc) are intuitive and easy to use
Can only import pages and .doc files
Imports most Word/SPO styles, but doesn't match full functionality. We should look into this more.
Footnote styles are a problem. They don't import because there is not a matching functionality in the .iba format. The Glossary feature in iBooks Author could replace this functionality for a small number of footnotes, but would be extremely cumbersome for a book with many notes.
Exports PDF (with easy to apply security settings), .iba (proprietary format), and plain text.
Tables from Word or Excel don't import easily to .iba tables, so data heavy texts would require a lot more work. Formatting does not come through.
HTML ability deserves more looking into, especially if you can use javascript to do something widgets cannot.

Other Thoughts

Basically Apple's extended and proprietary version of ePub3 and/or HTML5, so .iba projects would make the best sense if distribution through iBook Store is required.
Probably not worth the effort to convert books unless they have lots of interactive content and the audience has access to iPads.