EPUB mobile development underway

This summer Connexions/Rhaptos development team at Rice is developing mobile versions for all of the Connexions content based on the EPUB standard. The development fortuitously builds on code one of our developers created in his spare time, highlighted in our showcase for partial and experimental work, Rhaptos Lab. The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation generously awarded us a specific grant to finish an EPUB export for Connexions content this summer.

EPUB is supported by the major mobile devices and e-book readers including Apple's iPad and iPhone, Sony’s eReader, and enTourage’s eDGe. EPUB books can also be read offline on notepads and laptops and the EPUB format is used by accessibility services that enhance content for use by individuals needing assistive technologies for reading.

The new EPUB export will work like our current PDF export system and when authors update any part of their content, new EPUB versions will be automatically created, just like we do now for PDFs. The EPUB exports will be available on cnx.org and will be available for Enterprise Rhaptos installations also.

For developers interested in following the design and development of EPUB, see our development milestone.