Case Studies: Holt Rinehart Winston - Math Prototype

Overview

Holt Rinehart Winston needed to jump ahead of their competition in the textbook field. With web companion editions and additional interactive material and increasingly important distinguishing factor, they asked frog to design and produce a new prototype. Working with a design team, I created a scalable set of page templates, integrating Flash and bi-lingual audio content. I developed dhtml controls to handle the user interface needs including menu-ing and option setting, "progressive disclosure" of control blocks on the page and chapter, section and page level navigation.

I also prepared and presented an exploratory document tackling the problem of taking the Quark Xpress format source files through a flexible process to arrive at the prototype and design we were proposing. This involved research into Quark to XML conversion, textbook publishing workflow, MathML and the challenges the textbook content presented to an automated or semi-automated conversion to web-ready XML.

Roles

• Technology lead, liason
• Research, presentation of findings
• Prototype implementation

Highlights

• Exposure to publishing sector, in-depth exploration into the challenges and opportunities the web presents to this field
• Implementation of ambitious design to strict requirements
• Created media-rich, DHTML functioning prototype, cross-browser and platform compatible back to Netscape 4.
• Authoring report on XML publishing and Quark to XML conversion

Technologies

• Cross-browser DHTML, HTML, CSS
• XML, Quark to XML tools
• Flash, reusable media handler implementation