Science writing for the small screen

• Deliver technical articles and even books as smartphone apps
• Initial target: Firefox OS phones
  • Maybe Android Firefox

Typing is painful

• You can’t expect readers to enter data!

Low capacity

• A smartphone is not a desktop!
• It’s not even a little tablet.
• It has limited processor, RAM and storage capacity.
• It may not always have high-speed Internet.

Distracted readers

• “One eyeball and one thumb”

1. Get a clue, Ed!

• Read Badass: Making Users Awesome by Kathy Sierra

2. Read it again

Badass: Making Users Awesome by Kathy Sierra.

3. Assemble the tools

4. Write, edit, publish, repeat.

5. ??????

6. Profit!

RStudio® & RMarkdown

• R for data acquisition, analysis and visualization
• RStudio for integrated development
• RMarkdown for authoring

Reveal.js

• Slideshows in HTML/CSS/JavaScript

revealjs

• RMarkdown authoring of Reveal.js presentations

Why Reveal.js?

• Responsive: adapts to screen size and orientation
• Touch-enabled
• Linking slides is easy
• Two-dimensional navigation (left-right and up-down)
• Displays code and math well
• R revealjs package
• Speaker notes
• Long science tradition of slide “lecture notes”

Why not EPUB?

• No good reader for Firefox OS
• An extra layer of complexity on top of HTML/CSS/JavaScript
• Coding required to create EPUB from RMarkdown

Webapplate

• Mozilla tool to package web apps
• Can make
  • Firefox OS app
  • Firefox for Android app
  • Firefox desktop app
  • Chrome desktop app
  • Android app via Apache Cordova
  • iOS app via Apache Cordova

Firefox Marketplace

• Only distribution channel planned for now

Sample plot

Sample code/results

summary(cars)

##      speed           dist       
##  Min.   : 4.0   Min.   :  2.00  
##  1st Qu.:12.0   1st Qu.: 26.00  
##  Median :15.0   Median : 36.00  
##  Mean   :15.4   Mean   : 42.98  
##  3rd Qu.:19.0   3rd Qu.: 56.00  
##  Max.   :25.0   Max.   :120.00

Sample math

• Inline, for example, \(e=mc^2\), or
• Standalone, for example, \[y = \beta_0 + \beta_1 x_1 + \beta_2 x_2\]

Make webapplate documentation badass

• Very sparse at the moment
• Requires familiarity with Node.js / npm / Grunt

Fix the revealjs CSS

• The typography is awful
  • should be able to switch in Mozilla fonts
• The themes need tweaking for small screens

Fix bugs

• get rid of annoying dark background for code!!
• left-justify all the lists

You really should …

Yes, you should

• Read Badass: Making Users Awesome by Kathy Sierra.