Weekend Tech Review: a free iBook for iPad, week 5 2012
Here's a recap of the top tech stories involving Apple for the fifth week of 2012, including a look at product news, the week's business stories, and upcoming events. It's published as an iBook you can interactively navigate using iPad
The free iBook, created using the new iBooks Author, requires iBooks 2 on iPad. Simply download and drag this .ibooks document to iTunes and it will sync to your iPad within the iBooks app when you sync it.
Peruse our initial weekly edition (with limited interactivity) and catch up on the week's biggest stories, organized by subject.
You can read the work-in-progress iBook in either the standard landscape orientation (above) or in its text-optimized portrait view (shown below).
There's reference section with links to our social network pages, story and tips submission pages, and a listing of our recent product reviews.
As with any iBook, you can highlight notes and search for terms. Familiarize yourself with how dynamic new iBooks work, and with our content working to take advantage of some of these features, as hopefully both continue to gain new features.
You can also follow us on Twitter: @appleinsider and @DanielEran.
[ View article on AppleInsider ]
Comments
I won't make a judgement yet; I'll have to brood on it for a while.
I'm simply stating that a definitive feeling didn't come to me immediately, and that gave me pause.
Here's a recap of the top tech stories involving Apple
The free iBook, created using the new iBooks Author, requires iBooks 2 on iPad. Simply download and drag this .ibooks document to iTunes and it will sync to your iPad within the iBooks app when you sync it.
Peruse our initial weekly edition (with limited interactivity) and catch up on the week's biggest stories, organized by subject.
Very good AppleIinsider
ITEXT EXPRESS TIP
iText Express brings a lot to the table on the Mac when working with iBooks and ePubs.
You can take any web page and dump it to your desktop using Safari and WebArchive.
Change that to RTFD. Make a copy. Examine the copy with a right click View Package Contents to see all the objects on the web page.
You can view and delete advertising and other images and maybe even the .plist. This makes the content a lot smaller in file size. I usually sort by size and delete anything smaller than a couple of KB, just don't delete TXT.rtf.
Change the extension back to RTDF to view in iTextExpress again. If everything looks right open a new section in iBooks Author drag and drop the RTFD onto the placeholder text. Everything will transfer to your .IBA. Another way to do this is to copy after highlighting what you want in iTextExpress and on the placeholder text click and choose PASTE and RETAIN STYLE to make all the objects and text transfer to .iba.
.iba will create as many pages necessary to accommodate your new content.
Then you can tweak it to display what you want per page.
COPY CONTENT FROM OLD EPUBS
You can open an existing ePub in iTextExpress and copy content including objects to your new ePub.
There is a lot you can do with the Mac OS, RTF and RTFD (unique to Mac), WebArchive, and other tools available to iBooks Author.
MAC MAIL TRICK
I like to take a lot of RSS articles from Mac Mail feed by highlighting them in the second pane where the subject headers are displayed, hitting COPY from the Mac Mail menu bar, and then waiting until all the content is retrieved by Mac Mail to the clipboard. Then I paste the clipboard into iTextExpress and save as a RTFD.That way I can grab a hundred or more pages of RTF content with images, video etc. to work with using some of the above tricks.
PRACTICE
All of the above takes some practice to see what each action does but again I hope this gives some ideas of manipulating content with the Mac so that anyone can create new iBooks with as little effort as possible.
Very good AppleIinsider
Why are you breaking the rules and shilling your product here? Don't do that. Pay for advertising if you want to advertise.
Very good AppleIinsider
ITEXT EXPRESS TIP
iText Express brings a lot to the table on the Mac when working with iBooks and ePubs.
You can take any web page and dump it to your desktop using Safari and WebArchive.
Change that to RTFD. Make a copy. Examine the copy with a right click View Package Contents to see all the objects on the web page.
You can view and delete advertising and other images and maybe even the .plist. This makes the content a lot smaller in file size. I usually sort by size and delete anything smaller than a couple of KB, just don't delete TXT.rtf.
Change the extension back to RTDF to view in iTextExpress again. If everything looks right open a new section in iBooks Author drag and drop the RTFD onto the placeholder text. Everything will transfer to your .IBA. Another way to do this is to copy after highlighting what you want in iTextExpress and on the placeholder text click and choose PASTE and RETAIN STYLE to make all the objects and text transfer to .iba.
.iba will create as many pages necessary to accommodate your new content.
Then you can tweak it to display what you want per page.
COPY CONTENT FROM OLD EPUBS
You can open an existing ePub in iTextExpress and copy content including objects to your new ePub.
There is a lot you can do with the Mac OS, RTF and RTFD (unique to Mac), WebArchive, and other tools available to iBooks Author.
MAC MAIL TRICK
I like to take a lot of RSS articles from Mac Mail feed by highlighting them in the second pane where the subject headers are displayed, hitting COPY from the Mac Mail menu bar, and then waiting until all the content is retrieved by Mac Mail to the clipboard. Then I paste the clipboard into iTextExpress and save as a RTFD.That way I can grab a hundred or more pages of RTF content with images, video etc. to work with using some of the above tricks.
PRACTICE
All of the above takes some practice to see what each action does but again I hope this gives some ideas of manipulating content with the Mac so that anyone can create new iBooks with as little effort as possible.
RTFD comes from NeXT and it's NeXTSTEP and OS X specific.
Hey why do I have to use iTunes to sync my iBooks? Can't I just download them directly to my iPad. Again this is where not having a MiniSD card really sucks and a filemanager to organise those files to how I see fit. I Would love to just be able to store all of my iBooks, Magazines, eBooks, Videos, Music, Documents, ect. onto a external memory card for easy sharing between devices, backup, more storage, blah, blah. Here's hoping that Apple will include one on the next revision of the iPad or Students are going to have to purchase multiple tablets. Maybe they can go home during lunch and sync with iTunes for their afternoon classes.
You can, I just did! I am curious why you didn't try it?
You can, I just did! I am curious why you didn't try it?
With IOS 5 you can just email the book to your iPad. If you're reading AI on an iPad, just click on the link to the book and the OS takes care of everything. Elegant!
With IOS 5 you can just email the book to your iPad. If you're reading AI on an iPad, just click on the link to the book and the OS takes care of everything. Elegant!
Yep, I just created my own test iBook and hosted the link. Opens right up on iPad. This is awesome as I can distribute my own books ... As in marketing material .. directly to iPad users. Very neat indeed.
http://www.theverge.com/2012/2/6/277...ation-drm-free
With IOS 5 you can just email the book to your iPad. If you're reading AI on an iPad, just click on the link to the book and the OS takes care of everything. Elegant!
How do you email a 60 MB (or more) attachment?
How do you email a 60 MB (or more) attachment?
By making the book smaller.
How do you email a 60 MB (or more) attachment?
I didn't check the size before suggesting email, so the point is well taken. It works for smaller books, but 60 megs is too big. Share it via Dropbox or a similar service, I reckon.
How do you email a 60 MB (or more) attachment?
You email the link not the iBook. I'm assuming here knowledge of FTP and a server, but yes you'd have to be carful about size. Having said that the iBook Store is just a link to a server ...
Yep, I just created my own test iBook and hosted the link. Opens right up on iPad. This is awesome as I can distribute my own books ... As in marketing material .. directly to iPad users. Very neat indeed.
I have been fiddling with iBook Author with mixed success...
The biggest drawback I have found is that, apparently, there is no way to resize the text while reading a new iBook in landscape mode. I have old eyes and feel that the new iBook format needs to find a way to permit text enlargement and intermingled media -- and still preserve the desired format.
Just as you can pinch-zoom an object, there should be a way to pinch-zoom text -- or optionally change the font size and reflow the text... readers choice.
I have been fiddling with iBook Author with mixed success...
The biggest drawback I have found is that, apparently, there is no way to resize the text while reading a new iBook in landscape mode. I have old eyes and feel that the new iBook format needs to find a way to permit text enlargement and intermingled media -- and still preserve the desired format.
Just as you can pinch-zoom an object, there should be a way to pinch-zoom text -- or optionally change the font size and reflow the text... readers choice.
The solution to viewing text in any size is to hold the book in portrait orientation (you know, like a book), where you can choose its text size.
Asking to have the text size fluid in the landscape orientation is a failure to understand the genius of having two orientations that behave differently. It allows both flexibility in text size when used like a book, while still allowing dynamic interactive elements to flow around text as the publisher desires in the landscape orientation.
You might as well ask for an umbrella that can keep you dry even when folded. The point of changing is to deliver two sets of behaviors, appropriate to the design needs.