Overview

McGraw-Hill Education is a learning science company that provides customized educational content, software, and services for Pre-K through postgraduate education.

Given the fact that Flash would become obsolete by 2020, McGraw-Hill Education(MHE) wanted to transform its Flash based K-12 grade educational books to HTML5.

The company wanted a robust platform to convert its existing library of Flash textbooks into the open-standard HTML5 format for rich media functionalities and compatibility with all browsers.

McGraw-Hill Education turned to HurixDigital to leverage its award-winning, cloud-based e-publishing solution -Kitaboo. They wanted to

  • Convert Flash versions of the academic titles into HTML5-based eBooks that were compatible with all browsers and devices such as smartphones, eReaders, tablets and laptops
  • Support all tools and features of the readers across all ConnectED disciplines
  • Support WCAG 2.0 “AA” accessibility compliance

Business Challenges

  • HTML5 has largely replaced Flash for online videos, advertising and animations. However, even with the power of HTML5 advancing, creating complex apps with HTML5 can be more challenging compared to Flash.
  • Tools to convert Flash to HTML5 are still limited, and for complex applications it is not an easy process.
  • Another key challenge is to create scripts for the 21 additional features that MHE wanted to add to the HTML—based eBooks. The fact that these features varied for different subjects, added to the complexity of the process.
  • Besides, quality analysis had to be conducted both in-house and by the client team, which added to the challenge of completing the project within the tight deadlines.

KITABOO Solution

Manually converting a complex Flash project to HTML5 is a labour-intensive and time-consuming process, due to platform differences. Therefore, HurixDigital leveraged its award-winning
cloud-based e-publishing platform Kitaboo along with the expertise of its in-house technical team.

The Solution Involved

  • Collaboration between the teams of MHE and HurixDigital to customize Kitaboo HTML Reader for MHE’s K-12 products and integrate such customizations into MHE’s eReaderConnectED.
  • Using Kitaboo’s automatic conversion features to convert animations created with Flash and ActionScript into HTML5 and JavaScript.
  • Writing code to add 21 customized features for each subject/project in a way to provide seamless reading experience on ConnectED.
  • Designing a new UI while keeping the Flash usability intact.
  • Deploying all content on the Kitaboo server to make the conversion work seamless.
  • Conducting two sets of quality assurance tests – one in-house and the other by McGraw-Hill Education to ensure high-quality end-products

A core team of developers from HurixDigital and McGraw-Hill Education wrote special code to automate these additional features. A dedicated team coordinated the effort, streamlined communication and helped overcome all roadblocks to on-time delivery.

The project development teams worked in shifts to ensure on-time, on-budget delivery with no compromise to quality.

Key Benefits

Given that Google and Microsoft browsers would no longer support Flash files on their browsers, it had become mandatory for McGraw-Hill Education to shift its academic courses to HTML5.
Besides, the client wanted to leverage emerging technologies to provide a more engaging, interactive and immersive experience for their academic content users.

By entrusting this critical task to HurixDigital, the client achieved the following benefits

  • They could upgrade their academic content to HTML before Flash became obsolete
  • By transitioning toan open-platform HTML5, they were able to ensure that their content was readable on all reading platforms including mobile phones.
  • The conversion helped them reach a wider audience.
  • By adding 21 custom features, they could provide a more engaging experience to their end-users.