Help Needed: Making Interactive digital Books

Hi Melissa,

Apple’s Pages is a great way to make interactive books that provide lots of creativity for authors and are an easy send to the Book Store as an epub. Although there are no “pop-ups” like in iBook Author, there are lots of alternatives. Beside video, creators can record audio within Pages, animate drawings and add Image Galleries (my favorite). Pages also has the ability to add Camera and Equations and edit images with Remove Background and Edit Mask, plus they are collaborative, unlike when creating with iBooks Author.

Perhaps by creating a call out box in the text will provide an interesting visual alternative to a pop-up or even adding a drawing or Image Gallery. Here are some resources that might give you more ideas on the interactivity that can be used in Pages to create some interesting visual effects.

• Three Takeaways from Creating a Book in Pages - Reshan Richards
• In the Learning Center - Pages for iPad: Books
• The Power of Pages - Nancy K
• In Apple Books - The Gallery Effect Guide - Cheryl Davis (me)

And keep your eye open for Book Talks here in the Apple Education Community. Jessica Herring-Watson interviews Apple Distinguished Educators who have authored in Pages.

Hope to see some of your books in the Apple Book Store!

I'm wondering if there's a solution for creating books that also include the ability to add a Note. When you use the Landscape templates in Pages the ePub does not allow the ability to "Add Note". This has been confusing to my students because they expect digital books to have this feature. Is there a solution for this, other than just always use the Portrait templates?

Hi Karen,

That’s good information to have. I don’t know of a workaround - perhaps someone else can jump in. However I did find this solid explanation of advanced features (Use advanced book creation options in Pages) that explains what one can do in Portrait vs Landscape mode.

Thank you. It's still one of those features that iBooks Author was always consistent with, you always had the option to create a Note. The end user isn't really involved in selecting the template, and so they are confused by this missing advantage of a digital book.

Don't forget that Pages does allow for "links to pages". This easily allows the creation of a book that is not dependent on a linear presentation of pages. Choose your own adventure style of book, or a book that allows the user to select their next page. Students were using the link page feature to create their near and far images. I've not experimented, but I suspect you could use the link feature to create a similar pop up feature.

Each of the images on page 1 link to a specific page.