ePublishing Tools: Webhosting Content for Mobile Devices
(Page 1 of 5 )
Publishing eBooks can be useful, especially if you want to pitch your content toward people with mobile devices. But there are several formats; which one should you choose? Digvijay Chauhan examines the the most popular ones, weighing the pros and cons of each.
Abstract
Recently, while working on a requirement analysis task, I got a chance to evaluate a number of tools that either generate PDFs or some other popular e-Book formats such as MS Lit and the Mobipocket PRC format, which is Open e-Book compliant. In this article I will cover the various tools available, the standards they follow and what we developers have in order to make some commercial and really productive applications.
Apart from these points, I’ll also try to explore the possibilities of automating these tools. For us (developers) it might be of little use, but ask the content management people! They are really looking for tools like that! By automation I mean automatic generation of eBooks and conversion from the familiar content format to that of the eBooks.
Along the way I’ll provide tips and links to these tools so that you may try them for yourself. I will also point out the monetary aspects.
eBooks? eBooks became quite common soon after the popular CHM format was released by Microsoft Corporation. The exploding market of handheld devices further dictated the need for a format that is available on these low-memory devices too. Maybe that’s where the Open e-Book (OeB) specification came in.
Today most publishing companies that offer content management also provide support for producing content that is available on mobile devices, which of course have constraints on the computing power as well as memory. The eBook format and the especially written readers for those are designed in a way that they consume far less resources and provide with handy features like easy navigation, bookmarks and annotations.
Next: How to make eBooks – Adobe and Microsoft >>
More Web Hosting How-Tos Articles
More By Digvijay Chauhan
/ 6 
