Starting to work with Demibooks® Composer was a challenge at first, but as I became more familiar with the software, and as it matured with new features, it became very simple and intuitive. I quickly learned how to think like a computer programmer, without having to learn any computer code.
Demibooks Composer
Building my book became more about dealing with my own limitations rather than with the Composer app. My plan to use authentic Victorian-era chess problems as the basis for an interactive book seemed simple enough, but first, I had to figure out how Composer worked: there was no user documentation in the beta phase (Note: the Composer User Guide is now available. You can view the pdf file here).
I started out by experimenting with basic controls: navigation, the physics engine, and adding behaviors to an object. In Composer, the powerful properties of graphics objects (such as size, position, and opacity) are defined and altered with the Inspector panel. The Effects panel allows you to manipulate them with Behaviors.
Building, testing, and troubleshooting is a quick and relatively painless process in Composer. You add an object, create an effect, then preview the book to test your work. If it works as you intended, you move on to the next step; if not, you can quickly go back and make an adjustment, all right on the iPad. The only time you have to use the composer is to add a graphic or sound file to Composer through iTunes so you can include it in your book.
I decided to build pages resembling the actual printed chess puzzles in the Victorian-era books I had found. First, I placed the chess pieces on the board to match the original puzzle. Next, I needed a way to make the pieces move automatically into the positions that would reveal the solution. This was more challenging. I created number buttons in Photoshop to serve as triggers to move the chess pieces.
Steampunk Chess Puzzles
It’s a simple process to import the Photoshop .png files into Composer through iTunes. Once they’re in the iPad, you just click the “add” button and the image you select from the drop-down menu appears on the Composer page you’re working on. You can use pinch gestures to resize graphics, then drag or rotate the graphic to wherever you want on the page using normal iPad gestures. A handy feature is the “lock” switch in the Inspector menu, which prevents objects from moving by accident if you touch them after the initial placement on the page. This save a lot of frustration and makes page design very efficient.
Another issue I ran into was the page grid. I wanted a finer overlay grid to use for positioning my objects on the page than the 12×12 default grid overlay you normally see when you create a new Composer book. Eventually, the development team solved this by allowing the designer to alter the grid line spacing in the “Book” drop-down menu, allowing you to position large or very small objects visually and repeat that positioning on successive pages easily without having to type coordinates, speeding page construction immensely.
The “Inspector” menu panel also provides exact coordinates for objects on the page in pixels, i.e. X=350, Y=108. This meant I could set up the puzzle, then record the X/Y coordinates of the chess square I needed the piece to move. With this information, it becomes very simple to create a control button that will trigger the piece to jump across the board.
Composer uses very simple conditional logic to program behaviors. You can add an object, then in the effects menu, create a new behavior that is essentially a set of instructions with an “if-then” structure.
To make my chess piece jump from one space to another, I added the chess piece graphic, recorded the X/Y coordinates of the place I wanted to end up, then moved it to the place I wanted to it start: its position in the puzzle you see when you turn to that page. Then, I added a number button graphic, positioned it on he page, then “locked” it in place.
Finally, I created my Behavior: essentially, “If the user touches [the button], then change the position of [chess piece] to [X=350, Y=108] in .5 seconds.” I also added a second effect to the “then” part of the if-then instructions, “play the ‘Crank’ audio file instantly.” The overall effect is that when the user touches the appropriate number button, the piece jumps across the page to the correct space on the board, and you hear a “crank” sound, as if some unseen mechanism is moving the piece.
Remember, I don’t know any computer code. Everything I just described was accomplished simply by loading the graphics and audio files into Composer through iTunes, then adding graphics to pages and creating “if-then” behaviors using simple drop-down menus. The end result is that for me, interactive graphic app design has become completely transparent, allowing author-illustrator or graphic designers to create prototypes and end products in a matter of minutes or hours instead of weeks or months, without knowing any computer code at all. This is simply a revolution in App development.
What’s so exciting to me is that the initial functionality of Composer is just the beginning … the list of upcoming features will include support for adding video files to pages, advanced physics functions for graphic objects, and more. I can’t wait to see what others put together using Demibooks Composer!
Demibooks® Composer launched in the App Store on September 21st and we hope you’ve downloaded it! Composer has received some great reviews including at TUAW, iPad Curriculum and coverage on Publishers Weekly. We reached a number of lists including #20 in the US Free iPad Apps category and have had a healthy download response despite minimal public outreach. Thank you all for the many congratulations, comments, tweets, feedback emails and phone calls that have been coming in. Composer is just in its first version, and we have lots of work to continue building the platform. Our team is proud and at the same time humbled by the positive response, and realizes how much work we have ahead of us.
Many of you have asked about the PrintShop rollout. The service will launch in the coming weeks and will allow you to upload your books for us to compile, provide to you for testing and finally to publish to the App Store. We are constructing the infrastructure to help handle this in an efficient way. We are taking orders manually until the online service is ready. Submitting the book to Apple requires several steps involving getting your own seller credentials on the App Store. These are required to complete the stand alone book app prior to final submission to the App Store. Our PrintShop pricing starts at $499 and will reflect a “do it yourself” vs “we’ll do most of this for you” approach.
I wrote this post this past weekend on the plane flying back to Chicago from a trip to California , where a memorial service for Steve Jobs was held at Stanford University on Sunday. I had the privilege to be in his presence just once, when Steve was still running NeXT and visited with us at Fannie Mae to talk about his new products. He of course sold NeXT to Apple, and the rest is history. Steve Jobs was our Renaissance Man. He expected to shape the world in his vision, and did. His work has formed the bookends of many of our lives. From that first Macintosh in college on which I did everything from designing circuits to writing poor prose and even poorer poetry, to the iPad which is changing lives and may yet change an industry or two. What a run it’s been for all of us, and much of it due to his vision of the world. Rest in peace, Maestro.
Demibooks is in Silicon Valley for the TechCrunch Disrupt conference this week. We’re going to preview our digital books platform Demibooks® Composer at Startup Alley on Tuesday so if you are in San Francisco today stop by to see us and all of the other (mostly) amazing startups.
Preparations for TechCrunch reached fever pitch over the weekend. Staying true to mu startup mission, I couch surfed with recent Chicago transplants Beibei Que and Richard Komaiko of AttorneyFee. Buying monitors, cutting pipe to adjust the height of vertical banner holders, tweaking last minute updates to websites – AttorneyFee HQ has been a frentic hub of activity leading up to Monday’s launch at Disrupt.
Beibei Que and Richard Komaiko, AttorneyFee
The TechCrunch layout is along “camps” of startups. As you enter, you’re met with the Startup Alley – a long line of some of the hottest startups across the globe (OK, at least the ones who made their way here), flanked on both sides by deep(er) pocketed Exhibitors. One Startup Alley demo company is voted as the daily Best in Show, earning them a spot on stage with the Battlefield startups competing for top honors and cash. Seems like everyone goes to great lengths to get the popular votes, and baking cupcakes for attendees was quite within reason.
Some interesting companies from Monday’s Startup Alley – cabryn is creating a store for HTML apps which, of course, includes books. Israeli innovation was represented in full force as about 20 companies showed up on “Israel Alley”. From this set, I spent the most time with binpress, which bills itself as the “amazon for source code”. Also present: a startup that had a banner with its 15-year old founder and the message “there must be a reason VCs invested in this kid”. OK, if you say so.
Next up is the 500 Startups crowd, companies funded by valley super angel investor Dave McClure. My favorite is Udemy, a service that is educational, affordable and overall awesome. Fee Fighters represented Chicago in the 500 Startups crowd. Other Chicago luminaries included 5 degrees (Clinton Hopkins and Kelly Schwedland). and Rishi Roongta from New World Ventures who was helpful with introductions all day and into the evening. If I am counting familiar faces, then it was nice catching up with my old colleague Harshul Sanghi, formerly of Motorola Ventures and now with American Express
Tech Crunch staff reported 2500 attendees registered, and besides demos and exhibits the actual conference was held in fireside chat style in a room the size of a football field. Paul Graham held court at his now famous Office Hours. Then there are the finalist startups that make it to the stage to pitch in the ominously named “Startup Battlefield”, I really like cakehealth, a service that provides a mint.com view into your personal health insurance plans. I plan to give this service a try. Based on twitter chatter, many in the crowd thought these guys had something solid. Tonara had the most amazing presentation ever for their iPad based music sheet app – a concert pianist and a 4 person orchestra. The judges (AOL, GetSatisfaction, About.Me), however, didn’t like the biz model.
Dustin Moskovitz
The highlight of the day was a rare chance to chat briefly with Facebook co-founder and now Asana CEO Dustin Moskovitz (the guy most prominently “wired in” on Facebook after Mark Zuckerberg). Dustin made a comment that resonated with me, along the lines of how it’s still about the idea and without the right one it doesn’t matter how hard you’re willing to work as an entrepreneur. Tuesday morning in the Startup Alley, we’ll put our idea and execution to test.
My brother Liam and I were inspired to create Mia the Mouse, the story of a brave young mouse who goes on an exciting adventure to find a treasure that will help keep the family together, after the birth of our niece Mia. When we found out about Demibooks Composer’s beta testing program we were so excited! Now we had the chance to make the book we had written for our niece come alive and share the adventure with other children. We couldn’t wait to see how Mia’s story would unfold as it was transformed into an interactive app.
We had thought about publishing Mia the Mouse before we signed up for the Demibooks beta test, but nothing else seemed to fit what we wanted to do with the story. Demibooks Composer gave us the opportunity to make our creation more fun and accessible for children and their parents than the simple book in print we started out with.
Unlike other computer applications that can be very intimidating for less than computer-savvy people (like us), Demibooks Composer is very intuitive, logical, and easy to work with. It made transforming the book that we had written for and read to our niece, a unique and enjoyable experience. It was easy for us to incorporate a number of additional minor characters, images, and sounds without making scenes too crowded or visually overwhelming.
The “physics” feature was a favorite for us from the start. Even though our story is not about space or science, this feature excited us and inspired us to create novel story features. We were able to easily create floating parachutes, kites, fish, and more, all with the bonus of interactivity.
Also a favorite was the addition of the “wait” feature. This was a pivotal step, as in association with function and motion behaviors, it allowed us to create more complex behaviors, like Mia jumping up, opening her parachute, and floating to the ground.
For us, the greatest part of the project is how engaged our family and friends were. It was a fantastic experience to share the creative process with them, to show them what we were doing, get their feedback and then show them how their suggestions were incorporated into the App. It was especially nice to see the smile on our niece’s face as she realized that the book we wrote for her was becoming an interactive App that other kids could experience too. Contributing to that experience was the fantastic Demibooks team, who have all been extremely supportive of and responsive to us.
We are really excited about sharing our story with you and hope you enjoy experiencing Mia’s adventure in this new interactive App!
My experience with Demibooks Composer began just a few weeks after I purchased my iPad 2 in Spring 2011. Like many new iPad owners, I went a little “App-happy” after I began to discover the amazing variety of apps for productivity, entertainment, and education.
My 6-year-old son loves books, and we often share one together at bedtime. When I got the iPad 2, he was captivated by the interactive book apps we found. I was so enchanted, I wanted to see if there was a way to publish my own books on the platform. A quick internet search for interactive book-making software turned up a few names, including Demibooks Composer, then just beginning its beta testing phase.
Soon after being accepted as a beta tester, I first opened a beta version of Composer and found there was no manual, just a simple interface and a sample book. I dug in and began to explore, examining each page, the objects and animations used in the sample book, plowing through the behavior editor menus, and finally began to figure out how things were done. I made some early mistakes, but the beta team was quick to respond to my questions and helped me figure out where I had gone wrong, and pretty soon I was discovering and reporting bugs and glitches. What surprised and delighted me was that the beta team was actively seeking input for new features to add to Composer as the development process continued. One of my suggestions is now a feature in the software that I find very helpful: the adjustable grid overlay, which helps me visually arrange objects before fine-tuning their position in the inspector menu.
For my first book’s theme, I chose the fiction genre that best fits my vision for a simulated “mechanical” book: “Steampunk,” which re-imagines the Victorian and Edwardian periods as H.G. Wells and Jules Verne saw it, complete with steam-powered airships, clockwork automatons, and mechanical Rube Goldberg devices everywhere. Composer’s support for sound files and simple programming behaviors for objects meant that I could create “virtual machines” on the pages of my iPad 2 books that would delight and challenge the user. I began building a Steampunk Chess Puzzle book.
I can only describe the process of building an interactive book on the iPad as “making magic.” When you take static art objects and watch them moving, bouncing, and appearing on the iPad screen, it’s really amazing. Turning the page of a book into a toy with unlimited replay value is sheer wonder, and I am excited to think that I could build something that will create the kind of childhood memories for future readers as I have with some of my old books. I look forward to seeing all the wonderful creations future interactive book authors will make with this software.
