E-books: Gallery. Creating E-Books

Since creating an ePub file is an important step in ePublishing, I explored how to convert two of my existing "eBooks about eBooks" to ePub format as a demonstration. Since both books existed and were already in HTML format, I didn't need an authoring tool such as Word, Pages or Adobe inDesign. Since I had no plans to actually publish the books to stores, I tried the desktop tools: Sigil and Calibre, rather than other ePub export, conversion tools or services -- your needs, skills and budget may be different. The iPad and various desktop eReader apps displayed the resulting ePubs. Three examples:

{EB} this E-book course: I entered content in forms using Drupal book module; Drupal server software (a Content Management System (CMS)) generated HTML for pages automatically. Pages were designed with a wide 'slide' presentation style. Although the layout is flexible (e.g., resize browser window), graphics may not fit well on narrow screens. Screenshots were not updated after Sept. 2012 site redesign. Steps I followed (on Mac):
- browser (e.g., Safari): main E-books course page
- browser: Printer-friendly version (command at lower right) concatenates all sections; omits page header, footer, menus; slideshows become lists of photos
- browser: File: Save as HTML (text only)
- browser: File: Print; Open PDF in Preview (Safari browser includes links)
- PDF viewer/tool (e.g., Preview): Save as .pdf -- with Reduced File Size for galleries (otherwise, resulting .pdf too large)
- text editor (e.g., TextWrangler): open HTML file
- text editor: remove most HEAD tags, e.g., META, BASE
- text editor: assuming "images" folder contains graphics files, fix IMG attribute SRC="images/..."
- text editor: replace 4 gallery image sequences with links to gallery pages (otherwise, resulting E-book too large)
- text editor: Save HTML to same folder containing images/
- Sigil: open HTML file; Save as ePub (note: Calibre could have been used to create ePub, but I think Sigil is faster and has a cleaner user interface)
- Calibre: open HTML file; Convert to Mobi; Save
{NC} Newt's Cape documentation: I created HTML pages manually (this was in 1990s); each file a chapter, with few, small embedded graphics. Newt's Cape is a web browser for the Newton PDA; Newt's Cape displays web pages (including its own documentation) via the built-in Newton book reader, and could save the book as an application directly on the Newton.
{CO} Cocoa Fundamentals: free existing ePub. Opening E-books from iTunes
In the descriptions below , a 4-part label, e.g., {NC; ePub; iBooks; iPad} summarizes:
- 1) the source example (EB, NC, CO)
- 2) the source format (HTML, ePub, ...)
- 3) the application (Firefox, iBooks, ...)
- 4) the device (Mac, iPad).

{EB; HTML; Firefox; Mac}

course as a web 'book'
eBook course in narrower window
...too narrow(?) layout, scrolling issues
bottom navigation: TOC; and prev/next sections in hierarchy; cmd: Printer-friendly version
printer-friendly version displayed: sections merged, with no TOC (left or bottom), page header or footer
Save As local HTML file

{EB; ePub; Bookle; Mac}

Bookle manual
EB in Bookle

{EB; HTML-to-ePub; Sigil; Mac}

Sigil converted HTML file to ePub; left: files; middle: eBook; right: TOC (derived from headings)
good page layout, images, links
HTML code view below eBook; possible fixes: TOC nesting, slideshows, page footer? (not now)