ePublishing with Narr8

Narr8 is a simple, stripped down ePublishing platform. Its features are much fewer than Inkling Habitat, and the interface involves drag-and-drop methods of content entry. This makes it simple to use for people who don't have knowledge of HTML and CSS. From what I can see, it's really useful for creating heavily graphical EPUB builds, for example comic books. This actually seems to be primarily what it's aimed at; indeed, the default font is a comic/handwritten-style font.

A simple page in Narr8.

Another page, before the animation begins.

The above page, after animation has been executed. A new background image and some article text appeared.

There are some limitations with this package. While the drag-and-drop mechanism is great in terms of being free to place content wherever you like, it doesn't allow the same level of control that using HTML and CSS would. You are also limited in the amount of ways you can style the text - there are about 10 preset templates, so if you want more, there doesn't seem to be a way to customise them. The animations either occur on entry to the page or on click by the user - there doesn't appear to be a way to set the animations to occur at a certain time. With the on-click method, there are no visual cues to the user to alert them to the fact that they should click something. However, there is a function to add audio, which may be a way to alert users to the possibility of clicking onscreen. 

This seems to be a really useful way to publish content electronically. However, for non-fiction, and for publications that aren't graphic-heavy, I think a platform like Inkling Habitat is much more suitable. Narr8 is an excellent beginner's tool and a great way to make your graphic content accessible to many.