
Show HN: Bubblin – Next-generation books - IpxqwidxG
https://bubbl.in
======
boogdan
I love it, however I have some suggestions:

1\. Please, please use the metric system units or at least add both the
imperial and the metric when you explain something. For example the Earth's
rotation is in mph...you can at least say: 1000mph (1,674.4km/h).

2\. On the Sun's chapter, you drew it yellow. Well, this is a common
misconception, however the Sun is essentially all colors mixed together, which
appear to our eyes as white.

3\. There are too many links that forces the reader to constantly deviate from
what he reads, thus killing the experience. You can come up with something
similar to Apple's "look up" functionality [1]

4\. No love for Pluto :(

[1][http://i.imgur.com/CWgjdCU.png](http://i.imgur.com/CWgjdCU.png)

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jobigoud
> 1000mph (1,674.4km/h)

Could we all agree to use a space (or nothing) as the separator for thousands?
In French culture this is read as less than 2 km/h.

~~~
unexpected
I would expect a book written in French to follow French conventions,
unfortunately, in English (American), a space would read as very confusing!

~~~
germanier
The space is actually recommended by international scientific convention (as
it is the least confusing option) and also required if you follow the
(American) AMA style.

~~~
speps
It's a next generation book, it should understand my locale and translate
units automatically. How about that?

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sdrothrock
First, I love the concept. I've often been reading interesting books and
wished I could dynamically jump through them. I've even wanted to do this in
fiction -- for example, if characters reference something I forgot about, I
wish I could just click that and go back to that original chapter/scene and
refresh my memory.

I suspect that any UI awkwardness will be growing pains caused by it being a
new idea for books.

Technical Issue

1\. I click a planet expecting to go to a chapter about that planet (say,
Saturn), but nothing happens despite the page reloading and the address bar
changing to #saturn. Chrome 43 on OS X 10.10.

Content Issues

1\. I love the animated cover, but it wish it had relatively accurate orbits
and periods (within reason). One of the coolest things for me as a kid was
realizing that Pluto and Neptune switch places.

2\. The summary for the book says "all ages," but very shortly in you have a
bunch of math and symbols that don't make sense unless you've already had
geometry.

3\. The homepage presents Bubblin as "for developers," which doesn't seem to
fit. Do you want authors to present books (as suggested by your own), or do
you want developers to use it to present stuff (documentation, use cases,
white papers?) about development? It's also at odds with your statement
"Meanwhile, to those who are unhappy about the idea of having books with
flipping animation on the browser, here's a little tip: A lot of kids,
especially my nephews, love it," so I feel like there's a little bit of
confusion about the audience. :)

A nice idea/platform! I just wish I had something to use it for.

~~~
IpxqwidxG
> 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.

------
tenpoundhammer
I thought the solar system book was incredible and I am going to talk to my
wife about using it as a home school resource. I would definitely love to see
more materials show up that are like this. It would be great to have some
options for turning things on and off, like page flipping, removing some of
the higher level math as it might throw off younger students, and it would be
great to have a lock-in mode.

The lock-in mode would be a parental control that keeps a child from going to
other sites, so that I could set my kid loose on a book and know they aren't
playing video games.

While I acknowledge that other platforms make e-books and interactive books, I
love that you are making a centralized location on the web for the creation
and curation of these resources.

~~~
IpxqwidxG
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 marvin@bubbl.in :-)

~~~
tenpoundhammer
I read the material, and a good portion of it appears to be at a much lower
level than 10th grade, but the mathmatical portion appears to be high school
level if you stripped a few pieces of this book you would have something
around 4-5th grade level ish.

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bejuizb
Fantastic stuff! Truly novel reading experience.

The biggest challenge for you to build tools around this. Expecting writers to
know basic web development is a huge ask. You need a tool like Adobe Indesign
[1] or Amazon's Kindle book publishing tools[2]. The second challenge is to go
cross platform/device. The biggest challenge here, to reduce the size of the
entire artifact book and not just rendering speed/quality.

[1][http://blogs.adobe.com/creativecloud/publishing-for-
everyone...](http://blogs.adobe.com/creativecloud/publishing-for-everyone/)

[2]
[https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=A3IWA2TQYMZ5J6](https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=A3IWA2TQYMZ5J6)

~~~
sktrdie
Doesn't iBooks Author already provide a platform to develop interactive books?
[https://www.apple.com/ibooks-author/](https://www.apple.com/ibooks-author/)

~~~
bejuizb
Yes it does. Missed it. But obviously gets restricted to an Apple only
platform.

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yissachar
Very cool!

On page 17 of the Solar System book I want to rotate the globe but can't
manage to do that without also initiating a page flip, which is pretty
annoying.

Also, the formula rendering on page 21 is not quite right (Firefox).

~~~
IpxqwidxG
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!

~~~
QuantumRoar
Yeah, equations seem to be completely broken on Firefox. Is there a reason you
use Mathjax?

Personally, I prefer using LaTeX -> PDF -> SVG and simply including them as
images. Nothing's going to break with that, I guess.

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wingerlang
What's the purpose of emulating a physical book?

~~~
Slackwise
"Let's move forward, by moving backwards!"

The web is already a document system.

It doesn't need to be skeuomorphically constrained into a 'book' with cute
page turning animations, and no ability to use a scroll wheel, shift-space to
go back (looks like `space` is hardcoded in his script, but only works half
the time), or any of the features you already have in a browser. (I wonder how
accessible it is in a Screen Reader, too.)

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kraftman
From the contents page, if i click on say page 22, it opens in a new tab and
pops up saying 'you left off on page 13', then has the options to go back to
page 13 or the beginning. It isn't obvious that to actually get to 22 I need
to close that window, and im not sure why it has to open a new tab rather than
just go to that page?

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gosub
I wish there was a light markup language for this kind of work. Something
like: markdown + a less verbose SVG for static illustrations + elm for the
interactive part

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bborud
I don't really get it. This is an interface inside an interface with its own
custom behaviors and just a few pages in I get to the TOC, click a page and
I'm presented with a popup that tries its best to confuse me. Yes, the
animations are cute and stuff, but really: why do I want another reader-
within-the-browser book reader? There's already good reason I don't use the
ones that came before it.

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ctvo
Forcing me to click around 3+ times to even find out what this is about makes
me regret clicking on the link. I suspect if I were the average user I would
have clicked back on the landing page.

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x5n1
this will be really cool once we can get physical books like these. which i
doubt is that far away. it will be all the future we were promised.

~~~
sixQuarks
I agree. The true next generation book will feel, look, and function just like
a book. Resolution will be perfect, no eye strain, full color. Just like
looking at a magazine.

------
kzhaouva
Gorgeous!

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IpxqwidxG
Hello, Hacker News!

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

~~~
cmews
It looks great and I love the concept. Does it support epub format? If this is
possible it is easy to write markdown on leanpub (export to epub format) and
use bubbl.in for the perfect examples in javascript which would be a killer
combination.

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weego
Wow did we already forget all the lessons from years of developers abusing UIs
with Flash?

