Apple готовит платформу для rich media книг

Apple Cooks Up Rich Interactive eBooks With PastryKit

There was a lot of discussion earlier this week about the discovery (via Daring Fireball) of a new Apple JavaScript framework, used to implement the iPhone User Guide (link for iPhone users). The PastryKit framework enables HTML-based content with a more iPhone-native UI:

full screen support, fixed-position toolbars, and native-feel scrolling. Much of the speculation focused on implications for mobile app development. But looking at PastryKit as just an “iPhone Web app library” misses a key point: the iPhone User Guide is not an application but a rich interactive eBook. Thus PastryKit (and the related TuneKit framework for iTunes LP) are very likely tip-offs to the format underpinnings of Apple’s widely rumored plans to “reboot publishing” in conjunction with the pervasively rumored “iPad tablet” device.

It’s significant that this approach is, at its core, not Apple-proprietary but rather Web standards-based, and conceptually consistent with the epub eBook format standard. As such it may end up setting direction for the industry as a whole. It’s clear that rich media and interactivity will, over time, be integral to eBooks and other digital publications. I.e., digital books will not just be digital equivalents of paper books, but will evolve into new kinds of mixed media. Timo Hannay recently wrote a clever self-referential

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