Get The Multimedia Guide to Active Ebook
CREATE POWERFUL HTML-BASED PROGRAMS.
Get The Multimedia Guide to Active Ebook
ACTIVE EBOOK creates interactive, multimedia presentations. You don't have to amke your ebook look like a book - you can make it look like a windows application, a power point presentation, or anything you can think of. How do you know if it's the right tool for the job if you can't see what it does. If you plan to create ebooks or off-line web applications, you should know that you're in for a LOT OF WORK !! Many people claim that creating ebooks is easy. And they're right - If you don't mind your ebook looking sparse, and you don't want anything interactive.
Get The Multimedia Guide to Active Ebook
Active Ebook is more than an ebook creator. It's an IDE (integrated development environment) for web applications - and you don't need to know any programming languages. If you can use a word processor, you can get started. If you're willing to learn a few bits of HTML, you can do much more. You'll need to know a few things like:
1 Knowing that every webpage has a <HEAD> and <BODY> section so you can paste snippers of code in the right place.
2 That audio and video can be added as 'plug-ins'.
3 Making pages do more than just look pretty usually requires SCRIPTS. There are two kinds of scripts 'freshmen' web page artists should look at, JavaScripts and DHTML (Dynamic HyperText Markup Language).
4 You add JAVA to a page by pasting snippets of code - sometimes to the <BODY> section, and sometimes to the <HEAD> section. Sometimes you need to put one part in the <HEAD> and one part in the <BODY>.
5 There are hundreds of scripts you can get from online archives and use for free. Some of them require paid licensing for commercial use, but most of them are unrestricted freeware that only demand you leave the credits in the source code (the language behind a web page's appearance. The source code isn't visible, so it's good 'NetEtiquite" to include a 'credits' page where you leave links to the place you got the script.
In general, anything that can be done on a webpage can be done in an ebook. Many ebook creation software do not support the whole range of Internet explorer features, but Active Ebook supports almost all of them. Click on the links below to go to pages that demonstrate Active Ebook's capabilities.
Video | Sound | DHTML | Menus | CD PLAYER | Access Windows Executables | Run executables from your hard drive | Gif animations | Java Applets | Java scripts
In fact, with it's abilitiy to invoke executables,Active Ebook does more than Internet Explorer can do. If you click to an executable (.exe) file on your hard drive from a web page that's also on your hard drive, you'll get a message asking you if you want to save it or run it from it's current location. Then you'll get another telling you that some files contain viruses, and are you sure you want to do this? Active ebook bypasses this ominous dialog (called the 'event handler protocol'), so that programs just run - like they're supposed to.
You can even embed other programs in your ebook. Where do you get them? From freeware sites and student programmers who make them available for download. Not all freewares can be used this way legally - only "UNRESTRICTED FREEWARE", or freeware without licensing requirements for the end-user. Read the license for them before you use them in your ebook project. Some cannot be used in other projects without permission of the author. This demo has a CD player offered simply as freeware (there's a link to the developer's site).
Above all, you'll want to have menus, and one of the best is featured in this demo. In fact, it's used on this page. To use it, you'll have to work directly with code, but if you go slowly, and check you work as you go, you'll be creating sophisticated menus in no time.
Get The Multimedia Guide to Active Ebook