Pressbooks Authoring & Editing Platform Updates

[SteelWagstaff]

Hey all,

We’re still a bit new to this community of practice forum for EDU network managers, but one of our ideas is to use this as a space to share some of the development work that we’re doing to improve Pressbooks, to get feedback from you, and to understand more of what you want and need to use Pressbooks successfully. With that in mind, we’ve got an update and a question we’d like your opinions on.

We’re currently working on a major overhaul of the network manager dashboard. The idea will be to present new, filterable book and user lists, interactive visualizations that help you get a better sense for recent activity on your network, and a simplified, comprehensive network settings page. We’ve made great progress over the past few weeks, and are hoping to have a v1 release ready for your networks soon.

Here are work in progress screenshots for the user list:

The book list:

And the new visualizations:

The question we have for all of you is about the presentation of network manager options. We’re thinking about simplifying your configuration options and presenting them in a single place (rather than scattered over several menus, some of which are only visible to Pressbooks staff). If we do this, would you prefer A) one long page with discrete section headings B) one page with tabs that lets you choose options by section/type?

Option A might look something like the following:

Option B might look something like this:

We’ll keep the poll open through the end for a week (closing it on 8.18.19). If you want to discuss your rationale or other things related to these network manager improvements, the topic is open for conversation. @mcgratay and I are hoping to hold a new feature webinar to introduce the improvements and how they can be used in early September.

• Option A: one long settings page with clearly labelled subsections
• Option B: a settings page with tabbed subsections

[AndrewTurner]

:spoiler alert:

Wow people really like tabs! Honestly, I guess I’m fine with either (though I prefer single page). Mostly I’m just excited about all the options and stats which will be made available to us now!

Is there a high-fidelity prototype for these new network pages (like an InVision demo or other thing) we can play with to provide feedback on the interfaces? The screenshots are great but I feel like being able to see the options in context would help us (me?) provide more nuanced feedback!

[SteelWagstaff]

Hi Andrew,
We’re planning to release v1 of this in our next deploy (a week from now). I’ll check to see whether we might be able to put it on the Unizin or Wisconsin UAT environments before then …

[SteelWagstaff]

Hi all – thanks to everyone who voted. It looks like tabbed sections carried the day. We’ll be releasing the new book and user listing pages and initial visualizations for network managers along with our scheduled deploy this Wednesday, and plan to add a few more refinements/features during the development sprint that begins today. We don’t yet have a scheduled time to begin the overhaul of the network settings page, but we’re glad to have your input on preferences for when we do start that work!

[mcgratay]

Hey, all,

We released a new theme this week — you may have seen it come across your inbox: https://pressbooks.com/2019/10/02/introducing-malala/

The backstory is that we wanted to build a new design from the ground up while keeping in mind all the feedback we’ve gotten from textbook creators over the years. A lot of that comes down to how students are reading textbooks and what design elements make a book easiest to read in different formats.

One of the most frequent requests we’ve received over the years, though, was the ability to choose a font for your books instead of having to stay with the theme’s default typefaces (or have to maneuver around tricky CSS). In response, we’ve built in a couple of new theme options that allow you to choose from a handful of open fonts for your header and body text for each format.

These new options are currently only available on the Malala theme, and we’d like your feedback before we make it available more broadly. Does the font theme option fit the needs you have for digital and print textbook design? Is there anything we could improve? (Note that all fonts in Pressbooks are open-source).

Let us know what you think!

[SteelWagstaff]

Last year, Amazon announced that they were discontinuing their KindleGen command line tool that Pressbooks uses to generate MOBI files, and recommended that users use EPUB format for publishing new reflowable titles and updating previously published titles in the Kindle ecosystem.

Because the tool we use to generate MOBI files is no longer supported, and Amazon suggests delivering EPUBs into their ecosystem, we have decided to remove support for MOBI exports from the Pressbooks platform in a forthcoming release.

Going forward, our flowable ebook export efforts will focus exclusively on the EPUB format. Users who still wish to produce MOBI files for personal use will be encouraged to generate these files using Pressbooks EPUB exports and freely available desktop applications like Kindle Previewer or Calibre.

If you’re interested in tracking the progress of this task, please see this GitHub issue: Remove MOBI exports from Pressbooks · Issue #2193 · pressbooks/pressbooks · GitHub

[SteelWagstaff]

IMS Global recently announced that they will no longer certify legacy versions of LTI after June 30, 2021. They also announced that all support for pre-LTI 1.3 versions will end on June 30, 2022.

Due to this specification being retired, we will be discontinuing active development of our Pressbooks LTI Provider plugin and archiving the repository. Like other plugins and themes that we have previously archived, this repository will remain publicly available in read-only mode, though we will be unable to provide support for users who wish to maintain or extend the project.

For our PressbooksEDU clients, we have developed and maintain an IMS Global certified replacement plugin, which supports the LTI 1.3 specification as well as the Assignment and Grade Services extension. We call this product ‘Pressbooks Results for LMS’. It is currently available as an optional add-on for our SaaS clients. For more information, please contact our sales team directly.

[SteelWagstaff]

FYI, MOBI exports will be removed from Pressbooks core in our next release of Pressbooks (5.25.0), which is scheduled for release this week. Amazon’s KDP now recommends uploading EPUB files to their service anyway, but if you’re interested in producing MOBI files to sideload on your own Kindle devices, you should be able to do this on your own computer using the instructions provided by Kindle Previewer: Amazon.com: Kindle Previewer: Kindle Store or Calibre: E-book conversion — calibre 8.13.0 documentation, two free desktop applications which can convert EPUB files to the MOBI format.

[SteelWagstaff]

Longtime Pressbooks authors will notice that we’ve refreshed the export options for book administrators in the latest release of our software (Pressbooks 5.25.0). The most notable change we made was removing the option to produce MOBI exports directly from Pressbooks. Please note that none of your previously created MOBI exports will be deleted by Pressbooks. This change simply removes the ability to produce new MOBI exports.

Previous export menu:

New export menu:

Why Remove MOBI Exports from Pressbooks?

If you missed the previous community post discussing this planned change, the short answer is that Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing (the last platform which required MOBI files) is ending support for MOBI files. Earlier this year, all KDP users received an email from Amazon which read, in part:

We listened to your feedback and are making it simpler to publish eBooks on Kindle. Starting June 28, 2021, we will no longer support files in MOBI, PRC or AZK formats when publishing new reflowable eBooks or updating the content for previously published eBooks. Instead, we ask publishers to use EPUB, KPF (Kindle Create files), or DOC/DOCX (Microsoft Word files) files for reflowable eBooks.

What are My Ebook Export Options with Pressbooks?

Going forward, our flowable ebook export efforts will focus exclusively on the EPUB format, one of KPD’s recommended file formats. We’re particularly excited about ending our support of a proprietary, legacy format because it will make it easier for us to improve the way that users create ebooks with Pressbooks. We’ve already started making plans to improve our existing EPUB export process and are excited to share improvements with you in the months to come.

If you were using Pressbooks to produce MOBI files directly for your own use, you should still be able to convert Pressbooks EPUB exports for sideloading onto your Kindle device using Calibre or Amazon’s Kindle Previewer, both of which are free desktop applications.

[SteelWagstaff]

The most recent release of Pressbooks (Release Pressbooks 5.25.0 · pressbooks/pressbooks · GitHub) removed the option to produce MOBI exports. Please see earlier posts in this thread or https://pressbooks.community/t/goodbye-mobi-exports/1725/5 for additional details.

[SteelWagstaff]

Hello all! This is the first of what we expect will be regular Pressbooks product updates posted by our team to this Discourse category.

Pressbooks Directory Redesign

After gathering extensive UX feedback and input from many of you (thank you!), we released a totally rebuilt v2 of the Pressbooks Directory (https://pressbooks.directory) in June 2021. Not only is the rebuilt Directory more visually attractive, it’s also more accessible and easier to use for browsing, searching, and filtering books.

Self-Guided Directory Tour

We’ve added a self-guided tour to the Directory itself which can be launched by clicking the ‘Take the Tour’ button in the top right of the Directory’s header:

Updated Guide Chapters

We’ve also written new guide chapters explaining how to find books in the Directory: Find Books on the Pressbooks Directory – Pressbooks User Guide and how to improve your book’s metadata so it can be discovered more easily in the Directory: https://guide.pressbooks.com/chapter/adding-relevant-metadata-for-directory/.

Other Pressbooks Directory Changes

In addition to the big, obvious changes included in the Directory redesign, we’ve added a handful of other features and improvements you might have missed.

1. We’ve improved the display order for the Directory when browsing and after a search or filter has been applied. When browsing, the default display order will always be ‘last updated’, meaning that you’ll see the books who have had the most recent updates to their content or metadata at the top. As soon as you perform a search or apply a filter, the Directory will switch to a newly added ‘relevance’ display order. This algorithm attempts to show you the most ‘relevant’ results for your query based on several factors (search term proximity, metadata quality, originality, etc.). You can also use the display order dropdown to view search results using ‘alphabetical’ or ‘last updated’ ordering, if you prefer.
   
2. We’ve improved URL routing. Search queries, active filters, books per page, and sort order choices will now be reflected in the URL of the page you’re viewing. This means that you can more easily save, bookmark, and share searches that you’ve performed and see dynamic results on return visits to the Directory. We’ve also added a ‘Share this Query’ button to make it even easier to share your search with others. This feature was specially requested by librarians who often perform searches on a given topic on behalf of others, like instructors looking for OER they can use in a course they’re teaching.
   
   
   (after clicking)
3. We’ve also improved the display of book cards. We’ve added a vibrant new default cover image for all books that haven’t uploaded their own covers and made book covers function as links to webbook home pages. We’ve moved numerical information about books (word count, storage size, and H5P activities) to a condensed display just under the book title. If a book has H5P activities, we now link to an improved H5P listing page for that book which displays all of the H5P activities that have been created for the book, so that visitors can more readily assess the existing interactive activities in a particular book they’re thinking about adopting or adapting. We’ve also improved book descriptions by printing ‘short descriptions’ where no ‘long description’ is available and truncating very long descriptions with a ‘read more’ toggle.
4. Finally, clicking the site logo in the top left of the page header will now clear all active search queries and allows visitors to quickly reset the Directory to its starting state.

To learn more about these and other recent changes to the Pressbooks Directory, please see the specific release notes for our past several releases. As ever, we’re very interested to hear your feedback and suggestions to make the Directory a more useful tool for finding titles of interest published with Pressbooks!

[SteelWagstaff]

Over the past few months, we’ve released several new features for the Pressbooks authoring & editing interface that we’re excited to share with you.

Display Contributor Information at the Chapter- or Book-level

The first of these is a new option to display more information about contributors at the book or chapter level. Pressbooks has long allowed you to give credit to authors of a particular chapter or contributors to a book, but until recently, the automatic display only included contributor names. In a recent release, we’ve added several new options to allow you to display much more information about chapter and book contributors. You can now add a profile picture; links to a website, Twitter, LinkedIn, and GitHub accounts; institutional affiliation, and biography/description for each contributor in your book.

Users can enter this information into their user profile, and we’ll automatically import this information into the contributor’s profile from the user profile whenever a new user is added to a book. Contributors can now be exported and imported between books to make the process of adding contributors to a book faster and more efficient. We’ve also renamed the existing ‘contributor’ role in a book to ‘collaborator’ to reduce confusion between the two terms.
Authors can choose to display contributor information at the chapter level using a theme option and for your book by creating a new ‘contributors’ back matter type. See our guide for more details about using this new feature.

Allow New Users to Clone Books

We recently updated permissions for users who have been added to a Pressbooks network but haven’t yet been given a role in a specific book. These so-called “lowly users” can now clone books as their first action, in addition to creating a new book. We’ve improved the user dashboard for all users to show ‘Create a Book’ and ‘Clone a Book’ options and now display all pending invitations for users to join existing books, so they don’t have to rely on email invitations anymore.

PDF Option for Footnote Font Size

We’ve also added a new footnote size PDF export option for all of our Buckram-based themes. This option allows authors to increase or decrease the size of footnote text separately from body and header elements in their books.

LaTeX button in the Visual Editor

We also added a new LaTeX button to the visual editor to make it easier for authors to create the [latex] shortcodes needed to render LaTeX expressions in their webbook and export files. This button works much like the existing footnote and glossary term buttons.

Removed MOBI export option

Finally, we retired the MOBI export option, as Kindle Direct Publishing now recommends that users upload EPUB files instead. This community post explains more about this decision and how to produce MOBI files if you still want them: https://pressbooks.community/t/goodbye-mobi-exports/1725.

Dive Deeper Into Recent Changes

Each of these improvements (and more) were showcased in greater detail in recent monthly product updates, which can be viewed at https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLMFmJu3NJhet17A4FC_84OVDS8N18YyIo. These product update webinars are open to all and are typically held from 1-2pm ET on the last Thursday of each month. You can view the agenda and find the Zoom link for future webinars at Pressbooks Product Update Agendas - Google Docs.

Release Notes

For those that are interested in more detailed release notes, see the recent GitHub releases for Pressbooks and McLuhan (Pressbooks-book).

Improvements for PressbooksEDU Network Managers

Finally, we’ve released a few features that are only relevant for @EDU_Managers on PressbooksEDU hosted networks.

First, we’ve added a new book admin emails column to the book list available to network managers. The email addresses for book administrators will now be included in any CSV files you download from your book list. This should help you identify and contact book administrators more easily in situations where that would be useful.

Second, we’re now sending all ‘transactional’ emails for hosted networks (like when notifications are sent for new user or new book registrations) from noreply@pressbooks.com to reduce the likelihood that they’ll be flagged as spam.

Last but not least, we’ve made a series of small improvements to our SAML SSO plugin to improve user matching, the log-out flow, and the quality of information logged to the server to help with troubleshooting in cases where the connection is misconfigured.

As always, we want to hear from you about your needs and desires so that we can make a better software project. We look forward to shipping new features and bug fixes that improve your experiences using our software in the months to come!

[SteelWagstaff]

Hello from all of us at Pressbooks!

We released several new updates for you this past month, including major improvements to our export routines, accessibility enhancements for our reading and user admin interfaces, and fixes to make using our Results for LMS product even smoother.

Export Updates

The biggest changes we released in November were updates to the mostly behind-the-scenes processes Pressbooks uses to produce EPUB, XHTML, and PDF export files. The most exciting of these changes were the updates we made to our EPUB export process. As of our latest release, users will now see a single EPUB option in the export menu; when this option is selected, Pressbooks will produce files which conform to and are validated against the EPUB 3.2 standard. The previous EPUB 2.01 and EPUB 3 export options have been retired.

While we were at it, we made improvements to the semantic markup used in several places in Pressbooks, especially on the title page and running headers in XHTML and PDF exports. We also simplified and improved the display of interactive elements which have been excluded from EPUB and PDF exports. The fallback content inserted for excluded elements now include anchor links which direct the reader to the specific location where the excluded element occurs, instead of simply linking to the page/chapter which contained it.

Along with these semantic changes, we released new versions of Pressbooks-book and several of our themes with minor tweaks which accompany the semantic improvements made to export formats and improve the appearance of EPUB and PDF exports.

Accessibility Improvements

As part of our broader commitment to ensuring that our software is accessible to all users, we made a number of fixes to resolve issues that emerged from our most recent comprehensive accessibility audit (performed by our friends at the Inclusive Design Research Centre).

For example, we fixed several minor parsing errors in the webbook homepage and the reading interface, added aria-labels to all nav elements in the Pressbooks web interface to further clarify their purpose for users navigating the site with assistive technology, and added secondary indicators (underlining) to links within metadata descriptions on the webbook home page.

In addition, we cleaned up and simplified the ‘Publish’ page in the book administration menu, and added a link to our recently revised guide documentation for using this feature.

Keep an eye out for additional accessibility improvements and an updated VPAT from us in 2022!

Results for LMS

We released a few minor updates for our Results for LMS product in November. First, we changed the ‘contributor’ user role name to ‘collaborator’ to match usage elsewhere in Pressbooks.

We worked with Instructure to define and produce additional contextual information to our Common Cartridge export files so that Canvas can reliably associate our LTI links with a correctly registered LTI 1.3 tool. This fixes a bug that was affecting several instructors who are using Results for LMS in their Canvas course.

We also worked with Darko Miletić to produce a new openly-licensed Moodle plugin that fixes an issue that Moodle has in automatically recognizing the correct LTI tool and creating a grade book entry for LTI links following Common Cartridge export. We’d very much like towork with Darko and others on the Moodle core team to add this functionality to a future release of Moodle.

Finally, we updated our documentation for LMS administrators and network managers who use Blackboard, and added a short video demonstrating the LTI 1.3 tool registration steps. Future documentation improvements and additional videos for other LMSes will be coming soon (thank you @ThomasWeideman!)

Upcoming Product Updates

We’ve cancelled our December monthly product update webinar due to the winter holidays, but will be resuming this monthly tradition in January. You can view the agenda for our January 27th webinar and find the Zoom link at Pressbooks Product Update Agendas - Google Docs.

More detailed release notes for the work described in this month’s product update can be found in our public GitHub repos for Pressbooks: Releases · pressbooks/pressbooks · GitHub, McLuhan [Pressbooks-book]: Releases · pressbooks/pressbooks-book · GitHub, and Aldine: Releases · pressbooks/pressbooks-aldine · GitHub.

[palanshia]

Since November, every eBook format we’ve exported to Kindle/Amazon is full of glitched fonts!
We’ve had to retract and unpublish 6 already published books that we’d updated in the last 4 weeks.
Before the updates, there were no glitches!
What is happening??? We are losing sales now, and have clients returning books to amazon (before we unpublished them).
Desperately yours

[SteelWagstaff]

hi @palanshia – thanks for mentioning this. Sounds like something strange is happening in the transformation process performed by Amazon KDP. We’re investigating actively now and hope to have a fix for this soon. In the meantime, see https://pressbooks.community/t/apostrophe-problems/1854/5 for some details and a potential workaround using the free tool Calibre.

[palanshia]

What is the update status on the glitching eBooks?
I downloaded Calibre, as per “bug report” suggestion, but it distorted all of the illustrations throughout the book.
This is gone from bad to really bad. My book launch was the first of Dec and the impact on my reputation is incalculable, now two weeks into the launch and the only books that got out were glitched.
hoping for good news today…

[palanshia]

There seems to be another glitch happening with billing. I’ve paid for PRO for each of my 4 books formatted with PB, but for the past week none of the accounts I paid for is allowing me to add even a small jpg book cover for an ebook (size nor greater than 750k!!). Your policy states clearly: “This is a one-time charge per book that enables you to revise and export watermark-free files for that book as many times as you’d like, in perpetuity…”

I find this new glitch extremely irritating because your website (Amy Song) expressly states:

Amy Song

• 2 years ago
• Updated
  Pressbooks is free to try and use indefinitely, with promotional watermarks in the book files.

When you’re ready to remove the promotional watermarks from your book and publish in the ebook and print-on-demand venues, upgrade to either our EBOOK PRO ($19.99) or EBOOK+PDF PRO plan ($99).
This is a one-time charge per book that enables you to revise and export watermark-free files for that book as many times as you’d like, in perpetuity. Upgrading also unlocks the global privacy setting for your webbook and allows you to make your webbook public.
To upgrade, click on Upgrade in the Dashboard and enter your credit card information. (If you have a discount code, be sure to click Verify.) …"