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Apple accepts Javascript in EPUB ebooks in iBookstore
- justincormack 15y agoPreviously, in a kind of reverse thing, any booklike app that didn't have interactivity was refused as a normal app and had to go in the iBook store. But interactivity ie Javascript in iBooks did not seem to be allowed. The ePub committee spent a lot of time trying to decide if ePub was just a browser and what an eBook was, but maybe Apple have decided. Not sure they would accept an HTML5 game as an iBook though. A kids book with puzzles in might work though and still sell as a book not an app.
- joshuacc 15y agoThis brings a lot of interesting possibilities to technical books. End-of-chapter review questions that are automatically graded being the most obvious.
- d0m 15y agoOr background/animated images in children' books. Or dynamic content adjusting to what you already know / had already read. I.e. I know what a prototype is, automatically, all the chapters/paragraphs explaining it could be hidden.
- ipardo 15y agoThere are plenty of books with webkit animations already in the bookstore.
- lucaswoj 15y agoAs a web developer who specializes in JavaScript, I'm really thrilled -- but as a person who reads books, I'm a little worried. What does the iTunes approval process for iBooks look like? Will any kind of HIG be enforced on the books? Do book publishers have good taste in interactivity? If I wanted interactivity, I would go to the internet.
- rakkhi 15y agoHm... interesting security implications depending on how the code executes, what external info/code it can call
- rm-rf 15y agoSo my ebooks can now contain executable root kits. Cool.
- tobylane 15y agoJavascript is pretty well jailed up, you can't communicate with local and remote files in the same javascript file.
- daeken 15y agoThat sort of protection has nothing to do with js, but rather the browser, which isn't in play here. Edit: It's implemented via Mobile Safari, as pointed out by justincormack -- this comment is invalid.
- justincormack 15y agoiBooks is implemented using mobile Safari, so the security model is the same. It uses CSS3 columns to make the pages going across.
- daeken 15y agoAh hah, I was mistaken. Thanks!
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- evinfinite 15y agoI find it rather silly to be worried about security given that Apple's one of the largest browser vendors in the world, directly or indirectly via WebKit. More accurately: all increasing of capabilities in non-immediately-apparent sources IS cause for concern. But that has to be weighted against the exhibited competence of the vendor. I find it unlikely that we-vet-everything our-brand-name-is-safe-computing-experiences Apple wouldn't have considered security in this move.
- MatthewPhillips 15y agoI had no idea epub allowed js in the spec. My reactionary opinion on this is negative. Why do we need this? What reason is there to have js in epub when we already have js in html? What distinction will there be between html and epub if they are both just document formats that can also execute js?
- tjogin 15y agoSo the good thing about ePub was that it was less capable than HTML, and now they've made ePub worse by making it better?
- MatthewPhillips 15y agoPossibly, like I said it was my reactionary opinion. However being limited by design can be a good thing.
- mofle 15y agoJavaScript isn't in the current ePub 2.0 spec. Though it is suggested in the 3.0 draft. Like Apple extended ePub 2.0 with audio/video support, they seem to either support it or not prevent it.
- nivals 15y agoThis is fantastic. I'm glad to see Apple doing what they do best... enabling content developers to be creative. Adobe has a long way to go.
- BasDirks 15y ago"Photoshop CS4 supports scripts written in AppleScript, JavaScript or VBScript. ..." etc.. :) What would you like to see from Adobe to change your mind?
- evinfinite 15y agoNot rendering magazines as 500MB packs of PNGs would be a start.
- nivals 15y agoBingo. Their magazine viewer is bloated. RMSDK is garbage. Start by bringing their expertise in layout and fonts to things that people are actually using. Namely, WebKit and JS.
- kmfrk 15y agoI was worried about the direction of iBooks and the growing interest in making app-based books instead of using the native iBooks store. This makes me more optimistic about the future of iBooks.
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