Hi Everyone! I am builing my first android app. Here is my plan. I am going to create a content app known as "kettlebell training". I have written an ebook about it and I would like to put it as content on my android app. My screen is very simple. I only have a "Home Screen Menu" and I have a tab named "Kettlebell Guide". The "Kettlebell Guide" tab will redirect my users to a new "Home Screen Menu" where I will create several tabs as the chapters of my ebook. When users click on those "Chapters Tab", they will be able to read the content of my book accordingly. Please Check Out my project draft on this google doc link and you will understand what I am going to build. Go here (https://docs.google.com/drawings/d/1SH_c8JctCoy31eS02_KSHXb5iVY80UXGsC-ounM6iaQ/edit?usp=sharing) My book is in pdf and Microsoft word document format. I just want some suggestions of what type of plugins I should use to embed my ebook by chapters into the app. Look forward to hear your suggestions and ideas. Thank you Tommy

I haven't used PDF's in an Android App yet, but I hear it's a bit different, and not what you expect. I'd 'test' it with a PDF, and see if the results are what you're looking for. If so, then the Word plugin and the PDF plugin will probably work fine for you. If not, you may wish to look into converting them into another format (like HTML) and using a different plugin for content display. Cheers! -- Smug

Smug is right...PDFs in Android are a pain. They don't open up natively in the app...they require an external application like an office app or Adobe Reader. It's quite inconvenient, and unlike iOS that opens them natively. There is a eBook plugin available, but it only works for iOS. You could probably use HTML/CSS to accomplish the same thing. Try a Google search and see what you come up with. Looking forward to seeing the app! I've always been intrigued by kettle ball workouts. Mark

You may want to have a look at my app Introduction to Reiki, here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.introductiontoreiki The text is all in HTML, that works the best. If you can, export everything to HTML and use one of the several available plugins with HTML in their titles. If you must use PDF, there is a hack as to how to open the PDF document automatically, here: https://www.buzztouch.com/files/howtos/intercepting-menu-taps.pdf Introduction To Reiki was my very first app so I used Menu Simple. Better result is achieved if you use menu with image, as you can see in my other app, here: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.operamusic or, you can go for the menu buttons plugin - it will give you a much nicer look, if you want to spend the time to create the icons for the menus. An example would be this cooking app of mine: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.inetkuvar However, as this seems to be your very first app, if I were you, I would cut down on complexity wherever possible and just have my first app published. In the Play Store, you are only a couple of keystrokes away from a new version of your app anyways, so you can always improve things later.

Hi Mr.Dusko, Thank you for your suggestions and also many others who have contributed their ideas. You guys have just saved me countless hours of trial and errors. After screening through your "Introduction To Reiki App", I realize that is exactly how I want to build my content app. Below I have several questions that I need to ask you... 1) Do you mind telling me what types of buzztouch plugins you use to embed the contents into your app? 2) Do you use "HTML Doc Plugin" or the "Custom HTML/Text Plugin"? 3) My ebook is in microsoft word format, so I can easily convert it into a html doc file. But the contents of my ebook have some images attached to them, can I just convert them (I mean images together with the contents) directly into html doc and then use the HTML Doc Plugin to embed the contents into my app? What is your suggestion? 4) Are there any video tutorials or guides you can point me to regarding how to use the plugins you suggest me. Thank you. Look forward to hear your ideas and suggestions. Tommy

Main menu is Menu Simple, and the option in it lead to other Menu Simple menus. The first option is called Index, as in index rerum or a table od contents in a book. Its options are all of type HTML Doc, with a twist though. You would normally put all of your HTML documents into the assets folder within your project in Eclipse and then use those file names in Document Location field of the HTML Doc plugin. If you do that, you should manually paste the HTML files into the assets folder, there is no use of uploading them to the buzztouch server, as they will not be downloaded back. In this approach, the speed of reading the HTML files is the best possible, because the files travel with your app, so to speak. In my case, I had the HTML files on a server and I read them from the Internet URL of the file, using the Load from this URL instead field. In this approach, you have to wait the first time for the files to load, then they become cached and there is no more downloading penalty any more. You also have to have a server somewhere on the Internet for this to work. The advantage is that you can alter the files on the server and they will be shown to all the users of the app (almost) automatically. That's it about HTML files. The videos are downloaded all in another Menu Simple type of menu, and the way to load the videos is to use the Launch Native App plugin with a suboption for YouTube. Then you just enter the address of the video on the YouTube. This is not perfect as it will show an Intent screen -- the user will be asked what app to use to see the video. It requires another tap to the screen and many users do not like that. You may also try to use the SP YouTube Android plugin, but I had no luck with it; the videos I wanted to show in my apps could not be downloaded with that plugin. For the option Download our other apps I use the Menu Simple plugin, the options in it being a case of Custom URL plugin, which point to each of my apps in the Play Store, and one of them is pointing to my development console as a whole. For the Share option in the main menu I used the following plugins: Share via SMS Email Us Share via Email and for each I had to tweak the email addresses and other necessary details. For the App Policies option I also used the Menu Simple with the options being of the type HTML Doc. There is a twist to this, however, since I called a PHP document which returns HTML. On the server, somewhere, there is a file called privacy_policy.php. In it, there is a lot of HTML with several lines of PHP. In the Load from this URL instead field I enter something like this: http://www.yourdomain.com/app_policies/privacy_policy.php?app_name=Introduction+To+Reiki and the PHP code catches the app_name, inserts it into the HTML and merrily returns back to the app. At the start of the PHP file there is something like this: <?php $app_name = "mobile application"; $get_app_name = htmlentities($_GET['app_name']); $contact = "<a href=\"http://www.yourdomain.net/index.php/contact-webmaster\">contacting us</a>"; ?> The app name is contained in the variable $get_app_name and when I need it in the HTML file, I just print it with the echo statement in PHP, like this: <h1> Privacy Policy for <?php echo $get_app_name ?><br> </h1> This will result in Privacy Policy for Introduction To Reiki when called from that app, but will result in Privacy Policy for Opera Music when called from that app. The reason I did it this way was that I was planning on several apps to share one and the same set of policy files. The policies do not change from one app to another, only the name of the app changes and that is what the PHP mashup enabled me to do. The point of all this is that Buzztouch gives you all the tools to create an ebook app for Android, easily, once you get the hang of all the tools that are available.

I blogged about this and you can see the above post here: http://www.bestappbuilders.com/blog/android/how-i-created-an-android-ebook-app-with-buzztouch/ with additional images for clarity.

Thank you so much for doing this, Dusko! It really helps us all spread the word about Buzztouch. I gave you some points for doing this. I can't tell you enough how I appreciate it.

@Susan You are welcome!

Thanks again Mr.Dusko for contributing your help. I really appreciate it. I will try to work it out.

Hi Dusko. I am a newbie to app development. I have various books on kindle and want to start to create the corresponding apps. Can your system be used for children's picture books?

> Can your system be used for children's picture books? Of course. PM me for details or use my site http://duskosavic.com/blog/contact-dusko-savic/