Storyline and iBooks Author

May 14, 2013

It seems like such a great fit...but can content generated with Storyline be embedded into an iBook? Is there an export as widget option? 

(Has anyone successfully used Storyline in an iBook like this?)

How otherwise could content produced in Storyline be packaged in a purchaseable format for iPad users?

9 Replies
Electron Karthick

Looks like an unusual requirement. iBooks are meant for Books like .ePub publishing format. Storyline is an rapid e-learning authoring tool capable of producing outputs in HTML5, Flash and for iOS through storyline App.

The only option i could think of is by publishing to HTML5 format and use some HTML to ePub tools to publish to iBooks. Again i don't think extracting storyline HTML5 published contents as 'individual pages' for using with such tools is going to be easy!

Alphonso Hendricks

Philip, I have had a similar question asked of me by a local publishing company (South Africa). I develop Physics learning engagements in STORYLINE and would like to fit a few of these into an epub textbook publication.

Have you gotten any closer to a definitive answer on your question posted almost 3 months ago? 

Philip Johnston

Unfortunately not - Articulate are frustrating uninterested in anything to do with macintosh. They're missing a big opportunity here with iBooks integration though, particularly given that Apple's own supplied widgets are so limited in scope. 

As things stand, it's either prohibitively complicated to embed multimedia and sophisticated quizzing into ebooks of any sort...or, if integration is simple, what's possible is limited to a point of being crippled. iBooks has presentation options that are a generation ahead of what's possible with Kindle or regular ePub; articulate has a quizzing and multimedia generation system that is both simple to use and powerful. It seems like a perfect match.

Please let me know if you discover anything; I promise I will do the same.

Trond Kristiansen

What you are asking for is the possibility to publish articulate content as .wdgt. It would be cool if Quizmaker could publish to .wdgt.  My guess is since there is a Player for the iPad, and you can publish Articulate content for the iPad, this is good enough. Publishing ePubs may not be an area of interest for Articulate.  

I have seen some amazing content embedded in ibooks but they are typically made with another type of authoring tool that looks nothing like Storyline. I you come from "the e-learing world" and are used to authoring tools then using tools like Apple Dashcode or Tumult Hype to create interactivity feels overwhelming.

http://blog.tumult.com/2012/01/20/easy-html5-animations-in-ibooks-using-tumult-hype-and-ibooks-author/

Alphonso Hendricks

Trond, At this stage i am so frustrated that I am prepared to jump from ARTICULATE to anything that allows me to create Physics learning material that can embed inside an ePub. Are you suggesting Apple Dashcode or Tumult Hype? Will Google that and check it out. Thanks for advice.

Failing that I will suggest that local publishing houses register a dedicated url that their ePub (highschool learners) can be redirected to when needing access quizzes and other ARTICULATE type of Engagements. My personal website is www.physicstutor.co.za and I have no problems managing content using MOODLE. But the publishing houses are not into the business of content management and they want to sell their material in CD or downloadable Kindle format. 

Trond Kristiansen

Alphonso,

if I had to/wanted to publish in the ePub format I think I would look for another type of authoring tool.

Maybe this link can help you? The discussion following the article is also interesting:

http://blogs.remobjects.com/blogs/jim/2012/02/16/p3862

If you use InDesign you can create some interactivity with http://www.aquafadas.com/en/digital-publishing/

I have not tried this. If you want to I can check with one of my co-workers, I think he was looking at this earlier this year.

You know Storyline can publish content to cd, just choose CD in the publish menu. This may be aceptable for a publishing house? The same content can be published as HTML5 and scorm, and it will run in Moodle. You might have seen this, it may answer some of your questions http://community.articulate.com/tutorials/products/publishing-a-project-for-ipad-or-html5.aspx

I have only been tinkering around with epub. I publish mostly scorm 1.2, 2004 and starting to use tincan. I hope you find a good working solution. 

Sean Hickey

It is definitely possible, although it takes some tweaking. You'll need to first export the .story file as HTML5. Then grab a screen shot and entitle it Default.png. You will have to write an Info.plist file to tell iBooks how to display the widget. There are instructions here: https://support.apple.com/en-us/HT204433.

Then, just place the HTML file, any support files (usually in a "story_content" folder), Default.png, and Info.plist into a folder. Add the extension ".wdgt" to the folder name and you should be able to drag it into an iBooks Author file.

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