Cope's Good Marketing File

I came across the video above prepared by Liza Daly last week and wanted to share. In it, she covers the basic formats that enable richer more interactive content that can be integrated into the basic EPUB digital book format - TODAY.

How? Three primary ways:

- Javascript

- CSS3

- Geographic & other data sources (via APIs - when connected online)

What's great about this is that these interactive formats aren't 100% reliant on Adobe Flash. Because HTML5 is already proving solid use-cases for Java, CSS and the like, these kinds of interactivity that Liza shares are already capable in iBooks and other WebKit based readers. Still - there's a substantial amount of evolution that still needs to take place. Notably:

- widespread eReader support is still limited

- the EPUB spec needs better endorsement

- security considerations are still TBD

- Graceful degradation will be a requirement in the near-term (when interactivity isn't part of the platform or network services aren't available)

I see a future for digital books that have statistics updated in real-time. Or fiction stories that could take place in the reader's neighborhood.  Or textbooks that feature rich animations for historical events, mathematical problems, audio & video clips... seriously - how is the publishing business not jumping on this like yesterday?

Side note: I need to investigate Monocle further. I hadn't heard of that browser-based reading system before today...