Several people have requested the ability to have commemorative books on their portable devices (iPhones, iPads, Android phones and tablets, and PCs). I've played around with creating epub type documents that work well with Stanza which is available on all these devices. The problem is that it gets a little complex for people to download the epub formatted book, put it on something like Calibre, set up Calibre to download to their device, set up the connection to make things work, and then download and read the book. This is way to complex for most people.

My thought is that it would be much simpler if there was a server in ClassCreator that could download books directly to the device over the Internet just like Calibre. It might also be of benefit to have this available through the reunion store so that we could charge for the book.

Any thoughts and feedback?

Sounds like a great concept. And you have identified the main stumbling block - it has to be easy. How to make it easy to use? Some background, to make sure we are on the same page (if you know this, then all the better).

The program on the device "downloads", the server just "serves" data. So the first thing required is a program on the device that can read whatever format you want to use. For some, that's going to be simple. Others require digging.

(e.g. CC is already a "server" - for example your file "vault".)

I'm not that familiar with all the apps for various devices, but you might also consider alternate formats, such as PDF. Not sure of what devices have apps to read that format - but it takes care of quite a few. iPad does not natively, but there are apps that do. Or you could publish in 2 formats, PDF and epub.

For storage (aka server) just use DropBox for the files.

User would start at some URL (web page - could be CC) via device browser. Then code (get someone to) a simple app that detects the device that's connected and then serve up the appropriate file(s) for that device. That keeps it simple for the end user.

Hardest part is getting samples of enough devices to test (and of course getting features available). Plus all the testing.

That's a rough outline - but I could be wrong on the details since my experience here is slim. If anyone has more info jump right in

It's an interesting project.

For those not experienced with ebooks, a little more details:

I experimented with some formats including PDF, epub, and mobi, plus some others. PDFs while the highest quality do not have a good reader per se and even worse, they are huge. epub is more generic, mobi is somewhat proprietary. Nook and Kindle are also proprietary, and they don't serve anything but their own books with DRM (digital rights management) enabled. The question is how many formats and how many devices do you want to support, which in turn determines how many converters do you want to support!

My favorite number is 1. Stanza will work on just about anything and it's free. That makes in number 1 for support in my opinion. Also, no DRM required.

To download it's a simple matter of configuring Stanza to go to a specific url, including port number. It then brings up a list of titles, authors, etc. to choose from. So it would probably take going to something like http://RBUHS64.com:6060 for example for our site. That would take programming on the server to handle the port and serve the directory function and downloading the epub.

Each admin would need something like 4Media's PDF to epub creator to build the book along with the metadata. Other applications use doc to epub, etc. And watch out, there are a lot of crappy converters out there - try before you buy (took me a eight tries to find 4Media). Then upload the epub to specific library with a new panel for each account like we do pictures. All we would have to do then is to let people know the URL, and price, and the server would be programmed to do the rest.

That's good info. The key for a CC user that is missing is ease of use. It's not that all those steps won't work, it's just that it's overly complicated (as you noted up front). Plus doing the server side code is one more step that defeats the "easy" part for a CC admin.

PDF size is not really a big deal today. Smaller would be nice, but it's not the killer it used to be. PDF is extremely easy to support right now - in terms of downloading a file - with little effort required for a PC since just about everyone has the PDF reader installed.

Similarly epub is easy for iPad (guessing from what I can tell). epub format is really a ZIP file that you can unzip and see the contents. Plus it looks like readers are easy to find. (I'll test one in a few.)

More steps than just selecting a URL and picking a file type goes against the original stated goal. It's pretty easy to code a simple script that can suggest the correct file for device or automatically or give type choices. For example, I posted client side iPad, iPod detection code a while back here. It's pretty easy to add others just by getting the useragent info from the device's browser.

Remember your stated goal, it's just for a "commemorative books on their portable devices" which you listed as just about anything newer up to and including PCs. So tailor the solution specifically for that goal, which is not the same as reading a book.

Many CC users are familiar with creating PDF documents. So start with that (relatively easy to do), get it working and then test the epub format which looks like all you have to do is download the file then open the epub file in the viewer - that also is simple - and familiar.

(I think you wanted CC to do this, but ATM think they will be busy for a year with new 3.0 and things that won't work right )

It's even simpler than I imagined for a PC. Adobe has an epub reader just like PDF - CLICK HERE to install for a PC

Now I just click on .epub files and it opens just like for PDF.