Over the past couple days I’ve been playing with Laker, a new ebook framework. This is a collection of of bits and peices of HTML5 that gives you a number of shortcuts in designing your own ebook app.
It’s based on a number of other projects, including Baker ebook Framework the Less CSS Framework, and it’s coded in HTML5 (needed for the really cool effects). If you’re into ebook development then you might want to look into the Less framework; this is the first I’ve heard of it and it’s rather fascinating.
The Laker Framework is the work of Florian Franke, and it’s a significant improvement on Baker. It has most of the navigation that Baker lacked built in,and it’s set up to enable a fair amount of the formatting found in the Wired app I reviewed last week including sidebars, embedded audio and video, and action buttons.
You can’t use it to copy the Wired app, no. But that’s a good thing. There’s enough here that you can use it to provide a custom look without copying any specific style.
Check it out.
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Looks nice. I was aware of Baker.. but this looks a lot better.
Laker compendium – Designing digital publications in HTML5 » Laker featured on the-digital-reader.com // Apr 28, 2011 at 2:45 pm
[...] http://www.the-digital-reader.com/2011/04/28/making-an-ebook-app-just-got-easier/ [...]
It frakin says I need A Mac and xCode.
If you want to make an app, yes. But if you just want to play with it a little, you can open up the book folder and try the html files in your browser.
Now you tell me. I want to make an app on a PC. Guess I will have to wait on that one.
In any case, I am satisfied making EPUBs for now using ATLANTIS WORD PROCESSOR and SIGIL.
You can use this to make a PC app. But why would you want to? It would be faster and cheaper to modify Laker to work better in your browser.
Right now I’m very, very bitter because I can’t upload my EPUBs to iBooks without a Mac. And I don’t have one.
So best I not even go here.
I’m bitter.
Did I say I was bitter?
I’m bitter.
I’ve been there.
Bitter didn’t get my book in the iBookstore though, so I finally decided to pick up a copy of OS X and install it in a virtual machine on my PC.
Cost me $30 for the OS X DVD, and a couple hours to get set up and figure out what I was doing. Then I subbed to Apple and had my book accepted soon after.
Felt ridiculous resorting to such shenanigans to get in, but I’ve made back that $30 many times over since then. And I don’t have to share my book’s earnings with Smashwords, Lulu or any other party besides Apple.
OMG I love you. If this works, I shall hunt you down and buy you a hot fudge sundae.
The only thing with these kind of frameworks is that you’ll still need to hire a programmer to create a container for your issues unless you plan on doing what Esquire does an publish each issue as a separate app which I absolutely HATE.
I priced around for programmers to do just such a task for Baker and it was quite expensive.
Hello Tablazines!
I’m one of the developers of Baker. We are surely thinking of implementing a feature like that, but our resources are still limited (as you’ve seen by the prices you got around to add that one) and so I can’t tell you when we’ll start coding that feature.
But that said, we also use the community feedback to prioritize upcoming features, so I can suggest to you and everyone else to give your opinion on our community page in order to help us to understand what’s needed more
https://github.com/simbul/baker/issues
Thanks for the response. It’s always good to see how really involved you guys are with this project to take the time to respond.
Makes me feel better when the time comes to utilize this that I’ve made the right choice.