Threepress Consulting blog

Threepress creates software for publishers, educators and authors.

Category: ebooks

CSS3 for Web Designers (and EPUB designers too!)

We were happy to once again be able to work on this series of web design books. I highly recommend both CSS3 for Web Designers and HTML5 for Web Designers. They’re a great resource for ebook developers who want to get up to speed on some of the tags and styling that will be available [...]

Developing an EPUB Linking specification

There’s starting to be a wonderful consequence to the growing excitement about ebooks in the wider world: we now have the ideas, people, technology, and commercial incentive to finally start to solve some of the tricky and tempting issues facing digital reading. But many of those solutions depend on a fundamental piece of the architecture [...]

HTML5 for Web Designers by Jeremy Keith available as an EPUB

We were very happy to develop the EPUB version of HTML5 for Web Designers by Jeremy Keith, the first title from A Book Apart. A Book Apart is the publishing offshoot of A List Apart, an organization hosting a fantastic digital design blog (including Web Standards for E-books by Joe Clark).
We love working with [...]

Easier EPUB Experimenting and Updating in iBooks

[Update: Liz Castro has an even easier post on editing EPUB files directly on the iPad.]
The arrival of iBooks this year helped many people understand that ebooks were already capable of interesting experimentation, multimedia, and nuanced, thoughtful design. Many of iBooks’ strengths come directly from the fact that they wisely chose to base it on [...]

Help OPDS Catalogs reach version 1.0

The OPDS Catalog specification has seen tremendous growth in the last year and it’s now fast approaching version 1.0. We’re delighted to request your final comments and critiques on the 1.0 draft through 17 August 2010.
OPDS Catalogs enable the aggregation, distribution, and discovery of books, journals, and other digital content by any user, from any [...]

A story unfolding one day at a time

Congratulations to our friends at Enthrill Entertainment on the launch of their first serial novel: One Child by Jeff Buick. Each day for 30 days, new content will open up in the online version. More about the daily release schedule.
The story is revealed online with new content each day, and will later be published [...]

Practical Interactivity and Shaping the Future of EPUB

The IDPF kicked off the next revision of EPUB with two days of face-to-face meetings in New York last week. I came away from the (lively, well-attended) meetings feeling very optimistic about the work ahead of us, as there was a humbling range of backgrounds and experience present in the room. That said, many of [...]

Geo-aware ebook demo

We’re making the geo demo featured in the Interactivity in EPUB talk available for download under the MIT License.
About the demo
In the demo, the geolocation capability of the web browser transmits your latitude/longitude. The code then queries the Geonames database to get an English placename.
After that, the code will continually poll for [...]

Interactivity in EPUB using JavaScript, HTML5 and CSS3: BEA/IDPF video posted

I re-recorded my talk at IDPF Digital Book as a video. Getting the audio synced properly was no fun so I apologize for a few production issues.
Interactivity in EPUB
View more videos from lizadaly.

Here’s the executive summary of the talk:

You can add interactivity to an EPUB book using either the <object> or <script> elements.
[...]

Designing ebooks for ePub reading engines (video)

The video of my session at BookNet Canada Tech Forum is now posted over on their site (scroll down to 1pm):

In the video you can enjoy the dramatic moment when the lights inexplicably dim and I think I’m being thrown off stage.
(Slides for ‘Designing ebooks for ePub reading engines’)