Quote:
Originally Posted by Quoth
Once you add animation or interaction or video or sound, it's no longer a book. It's best done as an app and not pretending to be a book.
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Creating an app instead of an epub with JavaScript is overkill. Moreover, you'd have to maintain code bases for all supported platforms.
While most
reflowable fiction epubs usually don't benefit much from JavaScript, except for adding hyphenation, JavaScript can be very useful for
non-fiction books, in particular textbooks.
Years ago I saw an example of an electronics textbook that contained a formula whose values could be changed.
I created a similar example that illustrates a physics formula.
(It works fine with Thorium and ADE 4.5.)
If you wanted to do this with a static epub, you'd have to add at least 4 images to illustrate how changes to the input values affect the result.
JavaScript might also be useful for other kinds of textbooks. For example, you can use it to
show/hide interlinear text.
Just because you haven't seen commercial books that use JavaScript, you shouldn't flat-out deny its usefulness or keep insisting that apps are the only way to go!