An effect of the iPad release has been to galvanize two types of digital product requests. 1. Colour content - mostly children's books and magazines; and, 2. iPad/content applications.
Even in its current form ePub is capable of a lot in terms of presentation and navigation as can be seen by the magazine samples here. But e-pub is probably not the correct vehicle for this content given the bookish approach of both the e-pub standard and the devices and readers supporting it. This coming wave of e-content certainly indicates that the packaged e-book and reader device concept just may be tired before even taking off.
The real barrier for high-touch e-Content in e-pub format is the lack of presentation reliability and quirkiness of most reader devices. Beautiful reflowable layouts are destroyed by the strange pagination effects and partial CSS compliance. It will be interesting to see how and if the iPad e-pub reader changes the presentation game.
We have yet to see what the Apple e-pub reader will let us do. We can
only hope it is Webkit inside, and doesn't have any of the hard-coded
behaviours of ADE. Azardi is Qt with Safari inside, but with too many Qt limitations, and newly emerging standards, it was a better strategy to move to Mozilla for Azardi II.
High touch and interactive (limited) content plays an end game around Kindle and other mono e-Ink devices. It is likely there will be more compelling content available to drive iPad and other notebook/tablet devices.
The concept of mobile Apps also raises the question of the near future relevance of ePub. The core value of ePub is DRM and theoretically consistent packaging.
With an iPad, Android or even an HTML 5 ready browser, content security is possible and a lot of advanced features are enabled for channeled content, interactivity and customization. E-pub probably works for standard trade books but dumbing down content for minimum common device capabilities and quirks does not seem like a content strategy for the future for any publisher.
The next few months are going to be very interesting.
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