Author: Andrew G. Tindle & Simon P. Kelley
Published: March 2012
Pages: 70
Interactives: 2 embedded videos, 3 quizzes, 7 virtual microscopes, 7 browsable reference papers, 3 VR panoramas and 1 astronaut biographical slideshow
Store description:
Moon Rocks is the story of the Moon through the eyes of a geologist. The authors worked with thin sections of Moon rocks provided by NASA, and use interactive panoramas, videos, and many many images to tell the story of the Moon. The interactive virtual microscopes are a new feature that allows the reader to easily explore rocks from the Apollo missions up close. Additionally, chapter 4 makes a detailed comparison between a volcanic rock on the Moon and a volcanic rock on Earth. The book also contains original NASA scientific reports, quizzes to test your knowledge and a glossary of terms. At the end of the experience the user will have a good insight into how scientists study Moon rocks.
Our aims:
The launch of Apple's multitouch fomat books created with iBook Author in 2012 introduced the possibility of visually attractive, 'designed' ebooks containing highly engaging interactive content. This book was our first investigation of this new format and some of the technical potential that it offered. Key features investigated include:
1) Strong design and support images:
One of the innovations for ebooks that Apple's new format afforded was the ability to create a book with a designed layout using a realtively simple to use wysiwyg editor (iBoks Author). The book consequently aimed to make a visual impact.
2) Text reflow:
Traditionally with ePub books one of the advantages was perceived that the font size could be changed by the user to suit their reading requirements. Clearly this is not possible when a book has a fixed layout. However, with the new iBook format both regimes are possible - fixed layout in landscape mode and optionally, text reflow in portrait mode. The Moon Rocks book was authored to take advantage of the strengths of both views.
3) Inline resources:
The book also investigated the ability to incorporate media resources actually embedded in the page, so that the reader could view and listen to a clip exactly where it was relevant to the text.
4) Embedded scientific citations:
As a scientific publication the book naturally cites a number of other scientific publications and papers. With the Moon Rocks book we wished the reader to have direct access to those publications from within the actual book and at the points where they were relevant in the text. Consequently, for the Moon Rocks book we created a custom HTML5 widget which is embedded in the book pages, that allows the reader to open and read the cited papers.
5) Virtual scientific instruments:
The ability of the iBooks format to incorporate custom HTML5 widgets opened up the possibility for the inclusion of complex, custom, interactive elements (the use of HTML5 for interactive elements also means that the resources developed for the books is also inherently portable to other platforms too). With the Moon Rocks book we used this feature to give the readers access to a virtual experience of real scientific instruments, where they could explore the samples for themselves as if under a real microscope and take their own measurements from what they see.
6) Custom HTML5 widgets:
In addition to the 'PDF' viewer and the Virtual Microscope widgets mentioned above there are several other custom HTML5 widgets embedded within the book. These demonstrate the power and flexibility that including such interactives can have to enhance the user experience. These include a zoomable VR panorama viewer, a quiz widget and a biographical slideshow of Apollo astronauts (shown in the screenshot).
7) Linked glossary:
The Moon Rocks book also makes use of the linked glossary which is part of the iBooks format. This allows glossary terms to be defined and illustrated. The glossary can be viewed within the book (as illustrated in the screenshot), but also the glossary terms can be linked directly to words in the text of the book.