We are happy to launch our newest major feature; an API for developers wanting to combine the efficient production of rich interactive content in our visual online editor with custom development.
The API is already in practical use. One example is the title “Eg og Pontus går i land” where singer-songwriter Odd Nordstoga is singing his marvellous book (you can still read it yourself, if you prefer to!), illustrated by the excellent Rune Nyhus. You can see the title in action in the screenshot below.
This book, with a completely custom menu, autoplay of pages, various animations and zoom effects, shows one way of using the API (mainly it is controlling timing and menu, the effects are actually created using standard tool features).
Other use cases include custom bookshelves beyond what you can already do directly in the visual tool, as well as creating a very rich custom-coded infographic as part of a tool-produced interactive book for e-learning. Two examples of the former use case are being released the coming week or so, in fact.
The API functions include (but are not limited to):
- Starting/stopping sounds and videos
- Navigating to new pages (known as scenes in TapBookAuthor.com), titles or chapters
- Kicking off animations
- Hiding and showing layers or individual objects
- Using in-app-purchases to enable functionality and content
- Tracking user actions to our Reading Analytics backend
- Change menu state and look
- Opening/fetching pages from the Internet
- Opening the email client of the device operating system
Do you see a missing feature or something you would like to add? Let us know!
Next week the API will be officially launched at a hackathon at Telenor. We are really looking forward to it. One of our ideas is to create apps helping refugees from Syria and neighbouring countries. It will be interesting to see what the hackers can come up with.
