A Book About Hype (3.5+Pro) 📘

Well, the difference between an app and an ePub document is that one ePub document can work on iPhone, iPad and Mac. (Since it's an ePub, it could work other devices too – but I'm focusing on iBooks.)

Admittedly, I'm not entirely sure if this project is going to work out. The interactive examples might get tricky. But so far, I think the book is looking really good. I've been testing the book on an iPad Air 2, iPhone 4 and a Mac Mini. I like the way it works. The text automatically reflows to fit the screen. It's so versatile. I'd have to struggle to duplicate that functionality in an app.

Also, by focusing all the sales towards one ePub document, it increases the chances that Apple will feature the book.

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Hi Michael,
im in no way trying to put crap on your idea!
i will buy a copy for sure.

Im just throwing my idea out there hoping some app genius will think sweet
there’s an easy way to make some extra coin while helping us all out in the
process,

i’ve got many kindle books that i use for reference however find that i get
distracted very easy and the “coding apps” etc go straight to the point so
i can keep on the task at hand without losing myself in bookland.

we are different of course and my views are only my own experience with
trying to convert facts to “onscreen” code.

books, apps they are all helpful in different ways

let me know when your finished i’ll scoop a copy up

cheers kim

Thanks for the comments. Don't worry. I didn't take offense.

It was a tough problem for me to figure out. I bounced around with The Unofficial GameSalad Textbook. I switched between so many different formats... PDF, ePub and App. The app version was popular. Apple featured it. There are strong arguments for creating an App. I had to make a decision. Even just starting this project was tough. So, I picked iBooks (ePub) because I could focus more on writing / creating content, rather than battling with different formats.


I've been working on templates for the book. Here's an example of some JavaScript... Geometry question - #2 by Photics ...the goal is to push designers to learn programming – and programmers to learn design. Lots of people say, "I can't code." They also might say, "I can't design." Hopefully, this book can help people get past that.

Over the weekend, I visited Manhattan. I took some pictures as a plan for the cover.

Also good news, there's a decent chance this book will be translated to German. If Hype supported Polish, that might be a possibility for the book too. But right now, no other languages are planned for launch though.

Progress Update - Monday, 10, 2015

It was a productive weekend. I didn’t get as much done as I wanted to, but I think my expectations were too high.

The book is about 10% done, but I might be adding more content. I’m still not past the beginning parts yet. I’m trying to be thorough. Work has begun on German translation too.

Just found your topic. This sounds like a great idea. Please let me know when it’s ready - I’ll be watching with interest!

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Progress Update - Saturday, 15, 2015

After writing thousands of words, and taking scores of screenshots, I hit my first major issue. I added my first interactive example. It seems that the interactivity doesn’t quite work as expected


What?! Why is it doing that? Why isn’t it filling the box? Apparently, it’s too much responsiveness. If I used a fixed width layout in Hype, then the widget scales nicely in iBooks. But if I use flexible layouts in Hype, the widget doesn’t quite match the box. I’m not sure if this is an issue with Hype or iBooks.

Another issue was choosing the right settings for interactivity.

I decided to use “Plays automatically” and “Plays on page”. While not apparent in the first screenshot, the blue circle pulses. I think it’s awesome. The design looks like static content, just another picture. Yet, that animated dot just calls for attention. It’s as if the book crosses over into another level. It’s very sci-fi feeling.

Unfortunately, it seems that my iPhone 4 is too old for this feature. Instead of showing the interactive grid, a circular loading icon appears.

I suppose iBooks was warning me about this, as it clearly says “Newer version of iBooks needed”. The interactivity works perfectly on my iPad, so I suppose I’ll just have to upgrade my phone. While the book is readable on an iPhone 4, the interactivity doesn’t work.

I’m planning to get a new iPhone when the new models are released – that’s probably next month. I was trying to hold out for a new “C” model, as I don’t like the larger iPhone sizes, but not having an iPhone that’s supported by Apple is starting to hinder my work.

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Thanks for the update!

I bet what's happening is that the Default.png image which iBooks uses (and Hype generates) mismatches the size of the widget in your book. Can you share an example?

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Progress Update - Saturday, 22, 2015

This is a quick update, as I should be writing more pages in the book. :smile:

Currently, I’m digging through the “Inspector: Typography” section. I was wondering if I was being too detailed about fonts, but apparently it’s important


It seems that missing Fonts could be the problem there. To start off the Typography section, I compared modern web development with my prepress experience. Missing fonts were trouble back then. Now that the web has modernized, apparently it’s a problem here too. So, maybe some story telling is OK. I’m concerned that the book is a little too technical. Many some real world experiences can lighten it up a bit.

Also while working on the Typography section, I thought it would be cake to describe the Alignment buttons. HA, apparently not. It felt a little too short, so I did some digging about hyphenation. I usually use left-justify because the browsers can’t handle Justify too well. I haven’t checked to see if there’s been improvement since then. There has been, but it’s still a bit fragmented.

@Daniel & @jonathan – Supposedly, hyphenation improves when the language is specified. This is done in the section of the code, but that can’t be edited through Hype. Perhaps this is something that should be added to the “Inspector: Document” section
 a dropdown to specify the document language.

Since the book is for beginners-to-advanced levels, I feel it’s necessary to include the “Hype Manual” text. Tumult did a good job with basic instructions, so I’m trying not to duplicate what they did. I’m trying to create something a little bit more expanded. It’s taking longer than I thought it would.

This makes me happy


There’s an “extremely high” like-to-post ratio on this thread. That’s because of the 19 people that liked the first post in this thread so far. This is encouraging. While I have been having fun on this project, there were some dark moments where I was wondering if it’s too much work. For much of today, I just slept – a lot!

I’m still aiming for an October-ish launch.

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Thanks for the requests! I'm not sure this does much for the majority of documents, but I can see how this might help search engine scrapers on foreign-language documents and may reduce text encoding issues on older browsers.

Looking forward to the book.

Are you accepting any preorders yet?

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Cool!

Also, I posted some more feedback here...

I noticed some issues with Physics issues while working on the book. @jonathan might be interested in that info too.

No, I tried that with The Unofficial Stencyl Textbook. It seems to dilute the effect of sales. The idea is to have a big launch, lots of sales at once, so that someone at Apple notices. If Apple notices the book and then features it, that's good news for me – but also Tumult. People that might not have known about Hype could learn about it through iBooks and a different area of iTunes. It also helps with getting a beachhead in educational institutions. The book could be part of a syllabus for a course on Hype or Web Development / Design.

I'm about 20-25 percent complete. I just finished the Inspector panels, which was tedious. Once I get through the basics of animation, I can focus more on what can be built with Hype – and how to built it!

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Progress Update - Friday, September 4, 2015

Unfortunately, progress has slowed. I didn’t get much done this week. I’m aiming to be more productive this weekend. (You can tell I’m serious by the short post. HA!)

Progress Update - September 8, 2015

Labor Day weekend was productive. It was three days to focus on the book. I was having trouble getting started on the animation section. I like to write my tech book in a linear fashion – starting from absolute beginner and gradually adding complexity. That was tricky with the animation window, which is a lot of tech smushed together.

It’s one of those things that’s easier to do than to explain. HA! Yet, I was wondering, what if someone was struggling to understand the timeline? So, I tried to be detailed and methodical.

The basic tutorial content should be complete soon. After that, the fun begins. I get to create examples on what can be built with Hype. I’m looking forward to working game development topics too!

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Glad to hear all your progress! While I can’t speak for others, the timeline and understanding how multiple timelines interact is at the very heart of Hype so it seems that being detailed here is the way to go.

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Progress Update - Sunday, September 13, 2015

I’m currently working on the “Timing Functions” section. When working on the custom timing functions part, I realized that Tumult might be missing a promotional opportunity. I haven’t been using custom timing functions, but then I realized that they could be timesavers.

What if you wanted a transition to occur twice
 Left-to-right, right-to-left and then left-to-right again? That’s three separate animations
 or only one animation with a custom timeline.

I’ve been thinking of making Photics.com a resource for web developers. I’m still not sure yet, but I’ve been thinking about uploading templates and online tools to help with web development. Custom timing functions could be something cool to share.

Unfortunately, I’m not seeing an easy way to share custom functions. They’re project specific. I’m thinking timeline functions should be sharable.

If custom timing functions were sharable, it might encourage more people to upgrade to Hype Pro.

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That’s a great and clever use for custom timings that most of us haven’t thought of - it would also be a great ‘Tips & Tricks’ entry. Thanks Michael

As far as sharing custom timings go, I think the best way would be as you have already done by uploading the screen shot of the ‘Timing Window’ and maybe a small hype doc with a sample of the timing function in action

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what if you make a couple of symbols with animated items inside of them with different easings then tell the user to just save the custom one they like?

Personally I prefer to disable all eases and manually do them since I like the control :slight_smile: I’d rather have templates with key frames since you can adjust them better since you have a bigger range to work with instead of the small ease box

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I'm thinking a Hype template, with all of the timing functions, might be a decent alternative. I still think being able to Export / Import timing functions is a good idea. Custom timing functions are good – but they can be even better.

Ah, I like this comment. It means that this book can be very useful.

It's true, precision is nice. It's not easy to work in the little timing functions window. Yet, the window can be resized. I mentioned that in the book. I skipped the part about how the shift key can be used with the handlebar points. Maybe I should add that too.

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I did not know this, please add it ti the book

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I think it is an interesting general question on what is the best practice for timing functions vs. keyframes. Timing functions are more visual, but keyframes are clearer from an animation standpoint. I personally would probably advise using more keyframes, but sometimes to glue the timing just right a timing function is simply easier. Then again, there's tools like Motion which make both the timing function and keyframes more apparent, which might be a better tool-oriented approach for us to take :).

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Progress Update - Friday, September 18, 2015

Crunch mode – From now until Early October, my main project will be the Hype book. I’m still aiming for an October launch.

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