How to get a Digital Publishing strategy in 60 seconds. See the Light.
17 August 2017
Looking back while looking forward at interactive CSS animations.
We made EPUB3 Unleashed as an interactive content proof-of-concept demonstration early in 2011. That was before EPUB3 was invented. It was a lot of fun and really pushing the boundaries of interactive content back then.
The first title was Digital Content Unleashed. That was a year before the IDPF EPUB 3 fixed layout spec was released. It was updated and changed to EPUB3 Unleashed and was our first EPUB3 fixed layout "test" book. You can download the full EPUB3 Unleashed book here. It's still pretty cool, six years on.
See the Light
This is a 60 second animated story about a frustrated publisher (his name is Stephen) who can't get an interactive digital content strategy working. As he stumbles around in digital production darkeness he is fortunate enough to discover AZARDI!
He instantly gets the AZARDI Power. He is empowered to do anything. He turns the lights on his digital content business strategy and walks confidently into the future.
Stephen saw the light. Make sure you do too! Turn the sound UP (it's loud!); lean back and relax and let AZARDI power permeate your life, mind, soul and business.
See the light is created in IGP:Digital Publisher and the EPUB3 Fixed layout file exported and validated as a standard package. It uses SVG, CSS, WebM audio, WOFF fonts and AZARDI Interactive Engine Javascript. That was pretty heroic for 2011!
Summary
As anyone who reads our blog knows, AZARDI was the first reading system to market in 2011 supporting EPUB3 and the first supporting fixed layout in 2012. We try to work with or ahead of the curve.
Now the world is moving into a new era of digital content delivery. While EPUB is OK for novels and linear non-fiction it has proven to be very imperfect for education and academic books, documents and content.
Education publishers need interactivity and additional online resources to compete with emerging online systems in an increasingly noisy market, and in developing countries that content needs to be delivered offline without Internet availability. The AZARDI Learning Library delivers hundreds of interactive components for publishers to include in their textbooks and that is licensed at no cost with IGP:Digital Publisher.
We are now working with the new Web Application specification to upgrade AZARDI:Content Fulfilment to deliver books as Web Apps created directly from IGP:Digital Publisher just like any other format. Books and content of all types will be delivered to end-users as sales, subscriptions and collections under the control of the publisher in as many languages as you need.
Posted by Richard Pipe