IpxqwidxG's comments

Heya HN'ers!

Sharing this book I made. It is a little iPad/iPhone thing with some awesome that you'll probably like. Good/bad either way, would like to hear your thoughts about it.

Cheers, Marvin

There is Google Web Designer for something like that:

https://www.google.com/webdesigner/index.html

Thank you @tenpoundhammer, I'm glad you like it! :-)

I feel almost every book out there can be re-written to bring impactful visual/substance that's possible only because of the web. There can be cute books written with toddlers on the mind, easy-to-read books for younger children and good college books that explain the fundamentals to adults like children.

Let me know if your wife likes it (although this demo book is slightly for a more senior group, above 10th grade) I'll be happy to do something for toddlers and middle school too! Hit me on [email protected] :-)

> The animated illustrations are great! They add a ton of useful information to the text.

Thanks! I'm glad you liked those... :-)

I too prefer clean san-serif usually. For this one I chose a narrow @font-face to do some analysis. No worries it's just a demo book.

> Web site splash screens fail/refuse to show you what they're about unless you sign up.

It's not a splash screen. It's a plain home page with a direct link to the about page at the center. You don't have to sign_up to learn about us or me. In fact you don't even have to sign up to read the entire book there!

Here, let me relink it for you: https://bubbl.in/about

If it's a book then page flip is a must. There's is no escaping that. Else it's a slideshow. But I do know a lot of people who prefer slides/powerpoint presentations over books.

Great points!

A lot of experience of a book off bubblin depends on what code is written under it and how the author wants to present it. Inverting light/black, zoom, choosing fonts are all easy things to implement here, and those are some of the flexibilities the author has when choosing something for their book on bubblin.

Reflow is altogether another beast - I guess it is more useful for books with just plain text and images (lifeless). We're not focused on those type of books.

Also for some books reflow is simply a bad deal. For example the more technical ones suffer badly in the current fragmented ecosystem of book providers. I personally dislike it when our inability to scale fonts turns a 50 page book into a 100 page one for no fault of the writer or the reader.

There is much less control on the design aspect of content within a book and even lesser control on the size of the downloaded files there.

And btw, while we are at it, try the scaling potential of Viewport Width units for book. That does it here for my book!

> The homepage presents Bubblin as "for developers," which doesn't seem to fit.

Fixed and deployed.

It's an authoring platform for superbooks. The zing here is that authors can write HTML, CSS and JavaScript to produce the pages of their book. Hence the term developers is used interchangeably.

Native apps are planned. Here I answer some of these questions about us: https://bubbl.in/faq

I believe that it must be simple for the book writers to create, publish and sell. And probably have an extra legroom for creativity too -- using the power of the web and all that.

I have some rough ideas on where and how we'll proceed towards integration with other formats/platforms. But this is a fairly large undertaking, so I'm gonna need all the help and guidance we can get.

Note, Bubblin is FREE for the authors, a non-profit, so we need financial aid too. Read more about us here and donate if you like:

https://bubbl.in/foundation

Hey thanks for the awesome thoughts on the book!

> 1. Please, please use the metric system units ... 1000mph (1,674.4km/h).

Absolutely. Will do!

> On the Sun's chapter, you drew it yellow.

Oh yes, it's actually bright intolerable white once you're outside the atmosphere. I wrote this book for my nephew and he totally loves sitting next to me when we do these creatives. So I'm gonna leave it like that for now and revisit later in the day (it's 5:30 am here in DC!) with him.

> There are too many links that forces the reader to constantly deviate from what he reads ...

I realized it midway that traversal would be more-or-less linear and then reduced the number of anchor links per page later on. I guess I'm gonna leave it on the writers to choose what's best for their book. Will come back on the look_up feature later, but thanks for sharing your insight here.

4. No love for Pluto :(

There will be love for the dwarfs very soon! :-)

=====

Meanwhile, to those who are unhappy about the idea of having books with flipping animation on the browser, here's a little note: A lot of kids, especially my nephews, love it. It might be that you are not the right audience for it, but kids really love flipping the page as it is. And they love the animations and visuals within too. There's a reason why Apple chose to have flipping behavior for iBooks - cuz otherwise it'd feel more like a slideshow. Fast/performant is another thing, but books must have a bifolia experience that flips comfortably at a soft reading pace. There is no doubt about that.

While I understand the passion with which people want to impress what should or shouldn't be on the web, but there's no point making it a turf war. There have been several occasions where exactly the same thing - i.e. books - have been appreciated by hackernews on the browser itself. By the very same people who at other times chose to batter the idea.

For example, this book on Startup School Doodles from my friend Greg Koberger was loved invariably by all of you:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8449652

So it's all a matter of context and audience.

Touch it very lightly, like a feather. Or hold it strongly and then roll it along with the page, then take your fingers off. It should work. That it is curling up is the expected behavior so you're just fine there!

Mathjax is loading/rendering a bit incorrectly on FF, for we're hammered right now. Will fix!

I apologize!

This particular book uses a lot of WebGL. Does your device support WebGL? Hit me on email marvin [at] bubbl [dot] in and I'll try to fix it now. I have noticed a few hot phones, particularly the Android ones so far, but a light text/images-only book should work on it like a breeze.

Hello, Hacker News!

My name is Marvin (see: https://marvindanig.com/), and I just released the first version of Bubblin, my project for superbooks. https://bubbl.in/.

Bubblin is all about gorgeous e-books that are possible simply because of the web. You can use it like codepen (a code playground) to write the pages of your book, and publish it like a blog. It can be a lot of fun, I mean serious fun, to do stories/book via code.

For example, I wrote this ~full book on The Solar System:

https://bubbl.in/cover/the-solar-system-by-marvin-danig

... which was supposed to be a small demo initially. I'd initially planned for only 10-15 pages but I ended up writing the whole book instead!

All the code of this superbook is available on Github under MIT license if you want to play:

https://github.com/bubblin/The-Solar-System

Bubblin is pretty basic as of now, but it has a great feel to it. I expect the books to work silky on iPads/tablets but given it's a web approach support is sorta okayish on most platforms - mobile or desktop. I'm not too worried about it right now, but I would love some help/advise on making it omnipresent on any and every device in the world.

I hope you like the project. Good/bad whichever way, help me with your feedback and ideas please!

Yo! - M

Edits: Edited links, 'coz no markdown on HN :(

> Basically impossible to navigate accurately to anything.

There is a lot of people who would like this.

Purpose of such a tunneled scroll isn't navigation in the traditional sense. It's rather a visual drive-through between two points where the artist gets to introduce the characters of her animation. In a sort of gallery.

Like billboards on either side when you're on the highway.

IMHO it does what it is supposed to do. Works for the artist. And that is great!

Wow this is cool. Will drop by as I live on the route of Fairfax Connector 950.

+1 for DCHN meet up!

Alright, if it's about amazing startups of DC then please add https://bubbl.in to this list too ... :)

We're all about flipbooks, started in 2014 at Reston area.

How does

> Electronic books are a subset of files

follow from

> paper books are a subset of "paper with ink on it"

?

I'd argue that paper books are not a subset of paper files, therefore, in online realm also electronic books should NOT be a subset of electronic files. It is a disjoint set by your logic.

So you mean difference between books and files is merely philosophical?

Because technically I agree with you that it's only the presentation and nature of 'binding' that makes for all the difference.

For example, a school girl yearns for a 'fairy tale book' Elsa, The Snow Princess and not a 'physical file' from Disney Office.

Owning a book is doable online as well. Clone, provide it to the user who bought it.

I'm actually still digging this one but "active internet" connection - yes - that's again doable. Localstorage() /something probably? Or wait for a future to be more online.

Yup! And that system need not have two hundred features and formats for the author to learn and master. I've been stoked by the idea for quite sometime.