Thursday, January 19, 2012

Apple Unveils New iBooks Author Tool, Not Just For Textbooks

In addition to announcing iBooks 2, Apple is also introducing a free application to create books for the platform.
The process of creating an iBook is surprisingly straightforward. Creators can type their text directly into iBook Author, but Rosner noted that some people prefer doing their writing in a different environment like Microsoft Word. iBook Author plays nice with those Word documents, as it automatically picks out and creates sections and headers from the text itself when the document is dragged into a new iBook chapter. Adding images is just as simple, as users can drag them onto a page while the text reformats itself around whatever you add.
TechCrunch has the story and relevant links.

Postscript:  Gizmodo has a video entitled "How to Make an iPad Textbook in Under Five Minutes".

1 comment:

  1. Basic Pharmacokinetics, a new iBook on the iBookstore

    After a few months of back and forth I have my first COMPLETE (but never finished) iBook on the Apple bookstore. "Basic Pharmacokinetics". It covers the content from my three credit course at the University of Oklahoma and includes much of the interactivity that
    was available on the course website. There are screen shots and a five chapter free sample available from iTunes. If you see more than one version it is the one released 04 May 2012. The free Truncated version is the first four Chapters.

    A direct link: http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/basic-pharmacokinetics/id505553540?mt=11

    It seems the SAMPLE displayed on is an old version. The interactive graphs require double taps.

    The free version, Basic Pharmacokinetics: Truncated, at
    http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/basic-pharmacokinetics-truncated/id514626933?mt=11
    is a better sample. More chapters and the interactive graphics work better.

    Please note you will need iBooks 2 (a free Apple program) on an iPad with iOS 5 to read these books.

    No plans for a Windows or Android version ;-) although the course material is available at
    http://www.boomer.org/c/p4/
    as always

    Contructive criticism welcome. I plan to add more interactivity over the summer with a more compelete glosssay. Hopefully the iBook 'system' will allow free updates. Some of the interactives will be consolidated when I work out a good solution.

    Enjoy, David Bourne, OU College of Pharmacy

    ReplyDelete

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