What is the difference between epub 2 and 3

Asked 7 years, 11 months ago. Active 7 years, 9 months ago. Viewed 25k times. Which is most popular? Improve this question.

This one seems to be more official: idpf. Add a comment. Active Oldest Votes. Improve this answer. Tom Tom 4, 2 2 gold badges 14 14 silver badges 33 33 bronze badges.

Sign up or log in Sign up using Google. Sign up using Facebook. Sign up using Email and Password. Post as a guest Name. Stay tuned! The EPUB 3. But after 3. Better to live with some obsolete features, and guarantee compatibility, than require too much change. This updated spec would be known as EPUB 3. The goals were:. You just have a few more options, much like the change from 3.

Perhaps most importantly, making EPUB 3. I expect this work to take six months or so; others are more optimistic. When final, EPUB 3. We need your help!

An EPUB Publication can be thought of as a reliable packaging of Web content that represents a digital book, magazine, or other type of publication, and that can be distributed for online and offline consumption. This new iteration was called logically ePub version 3. Broadly speaking they included:. Suffice it to say that the newer language of web allows for much more sophisticated structuring and formatting of ebooks.

Just get a little geeky: the new version of HTML introduced a number of new elements — the building blocks out of which you create a web page or ebook. It also allowed for a number of functions that were specifically useful to ebooks.

Or, say an endnote that pops up on the screen, rather than taking you to a different page. These hold the promise of simple, self-creating navigation pages, easier accessibility for disabled folks, and more — in the future. But most of that functionality is current un-utilized. The CSS too is much more sophisticated — and like the HTML can be used to make the ebook easier to read for the disabled, for example, or to display much niftier layout and typographic effects. This page provides the drop-down navigation menu:.

And you can and probably should generate an NCX anyway for backward compatibility see below. Imagine dropping in background music that enhances the reading experience. I still love this as an idea. Unfortunately, it has continued to be just an idea for most independent publishers for three reasons:. And all of it follows the bibliographic Dublin Core standard.

Having said that, not all of the retailers and none of the aggregators accept fixed-format ebooks. All of us have had the experience of a new app not working on our old computer — or our new phone not opening a favorite old file. In creating ePub3, the IDPF tried to make sure that all ebooks and ebook readers that met the standard were backward compatible — that is, most old ereaders can read a nifty new ePub3 file just fine, and most new ereaders can read an old ePub2 file without any trouble.

As recently as , I recommended that my clients stick to ePub 2 — precisely because of backward compatibility.