Interactive Menu on a Kindle eBook / Newspaper

[LilaQ]

Hey guys,

I'm about to make a newspaper for my company. My boss wants an dynamic menu for this newspaper just like the "Sueddeutsche Zeitung", where you have the main-topics in the left column, and once you 'hover' over one of these topics, the depending sub-topics appear on the right column (on which you can click, and jump right to the article).

How can this be achieved? I was trying to make an XHTML document, with an OPF and a NCX file, and run kindlegen.exe with these, which works great. But I don't have any idea how to create this menu, since CSS hover does not seem to work, and jQuery / JavaScript isn't available at all.

From reading a bit, I came to the idea that it may be possible with Adobe InDesign, but I am not sure. And I don't want waste time learning InDesign, when it's actually NOT possible.

So if any of you could give me a hint on how to solve this, it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks in advance!

Jan

[wiccan2]

I think your talking about Kindle's periodical format, this should be a good start. I haven't tried it myself but other people seem to have success with it.

[LilaQ]

Thanks, I'll look into that. Any additional comments and / or hints are still welcome!

Greets,

Jan

[LilaQ]

Ok, I read through this stuff. But I'm not quite sure how this could help with the interactive menu? I am still working with NCX and OPF files, but there is no possibility (which I can think of) to make this kind of menu.

Any more suggestions?

Thanks in advance,

Jan

[wiccan2]

The menu should be generated from the files you create, its a table of contents. So long as the files are set up to be a periodical the menu will appear.

[LilaQ]

So the toc.html is generated automatically? At the moment I am making changes to it by hand. Ok, I will try to determine how to set up the files being a periodical.

Thanks! I'll report back

Jan

[LilaQ]

Okay, great. The guy who made the unofficial "The Guardian"-Newspaper posted his work on github, and hsi menu looks exactly the way I want it. So I can just work through his files and figure it out.

Thanks for this great hint!

Greets,

Jan

[wiccan2]

The toc.html is not generated automatically, sorry for my confusion. I have been trying to get this working myself also. I have attached what I have so far. It seems to work but breaks when you click view sections and articles. If anyone out there can get this working I think it would be a good starting point for a template that people could adapt to their own needs. I just can't help thinking that theres just one thing I'm missing that will make this work.