Design Science News

Create math ebooks with MathType and Apple’s new, free iBooks Author app

Apple just released a free Mac application called iBooks Author that allows you to create ebooks that can be viewed on iPad tablets. This is great news for educators looking to prepare classroom materials for classrooms that have iPad tablets. And, we are happy to tell you that if you have MathType installed, you can add equations to ebooks you create with iBooks Author. It works just like it does in the iWork ’09 apps, Pages, Keynote, and Numbers. You can even make the math accessible to students with visual disabilities. Find out more about Adding math to books created with iBooks Author and how MathType works 600+ other apps and websites, in the Works With area of our website.

MathType users interested in making ebooks may also be interested in Scrivener. While it is not free, unlike Apple’s iBooks Author, it allows you to make ebooks that work on all kinds of computers, tablets, and ebook readers, not just iPads.

Promethean Adds Equation Editing Support to ActivInspire

We're pleased to announce that our MathFlow™ equation editor is now part of Promethean's ActivInspire 1.6, enabling teachers to easily create and insert mathematical notation within a flipchart or with an ActivExpression V2. There has been tremendous growth of interactive devices and whiteboards in the classroom, and we're happy to be working with Promethean and glad that our math-enabling technologies have become such an important part of many high-quality teaching and learning products. Our technologies for editing, display and speaking math enhance many of the most popular software products in the world.

MathFlow is Design Science's family of products providing editing, display, and accessibility of mathematical notation for websites, applications, and services. MathFlow components are widely used in education, publishing, and enterprise solutions, as well as commercial products. The technology at the heart of MathFlow is MathML, the XML standard for representing mathematical notation. Since our flagship product MathType also uses MathML, this means that most of the over 500 software applications and websites that work with MathType will also now work with ActivInspire. For more information on using MathType with ActivInspire, see the Equations Everywhere and Anywhere section of our website.

STREAM Tools Workshop for simplified professional technical publishing

STREAM Tools is a system created by Professor Alex Mamishev for writing scientific papers in collaborative environments using Microsoft Office, MathType, and other tools. He will be hosting The STREAM Tools Workshop next Friday, August 12, in Seattle. Workshop participants will learn how easy it is for teams to produce a stream of high quality, complex technical documents using modern software tools and methodologies. By attending the workshop, you will receive a copy of Dr. Mamishev's book and a special discount on MathType.

We appreciate systems like STREAM Tools because they reduce issues experienced in collaborative environments and have a low learning curve. To find out more about STREAM Tools or to register for the workshop, see the STREAM Tools website. You may also want to check out our website for Solutions for STM (Science/Technical/Medical) Publishers.

Scrivener 2.1 for Mac adds MathType support and makes ebooks

Scrivener is a document creation system produced by Literature & Latte. Due to demand from its customers, Scrivener has added MathType support in its forthcoming 2.1 version for the Macintosh, expected to be released in a few weeks. They have a short video showing how you can insert a MathType equation into a Scrivener document. It is our hope that they will soon add MathType support in their Windows version, which is currently in beta.

Scrivener has a lot of interesting features and may be a good choice for an educator that needs to produce ebooks, as it supports both EPUB and Kindle's MOBI formats. It also has extensive import and export capabilities. There are several excellent videos on their website demonstrating how it works.

Scrivener is a powerful product with a committed company behind it. We at Design Science look forward to a long and fruitful relationship with the Scrivener team.

MathType Mac 6.7 brings equation support to Office 2011

MathType 6.7 for the Mac is now available! This long-awaited release brings support to Microsoft Office 2011, Mac OS X Lion, as well as extending its support to over 500 applications and websites.

Since Microsoft has restored VBA (Visual Basic for Applications) to Office 2011, we were able to restore all the MathType commands in Word that had to be dropped for Office 2008, including an insert equation button, equation numbering, and many others.

Although many of our customers use MathType with Office, we also know that you are interested in adding equations to emails, blog posts, elearning systems, and many other applications and websites. Continuing our “Equations Everywhere and Anywhere” philosophy, MathType 6.7 expands support to more than 500 applications and websites, including iWork '09 (Pages, Numbers, Keynote), OpenOffice, Google Docs, InDesign, Maple, Mathematica, Wolfram Alpha, Blackboard, Moodle, Smart Board, Gmail, Wikipedia, to name just a few.

Some of you will be happy to know we’ve rewritten MathType’s installer from the ground up. It no longer requires Rosetta and the installation process is much, much faster.

MathType 6.7 is currently available in our online store or as a free 30-day trial! If you want to read more, see the Full Feature List. Let us know what you think of the new release!

Would you rather watch a video or read a user manual?

Online videos are quite popular these days, and though we don't have talking twin babies or catchy jingles about days of the week, we do have some great user-created videos about MathType! Videos are a great way to demonstrate the various features and benefits of MathType and we want to highlight the best user-created videos, like Handwritten equations in Microsoft Word, or a lesson by Maria Andersen on Formatting equations.

Our YouTube MathType Channel is just getting started and would love your help. Let us know what videos you would like to see, or better yet make your own MathType video and we’ll “Favorite” the ones we like best. To give you some ideas, how about a video of your favorite tips and tricks, of features you discovered that you want to share with the world. Also, MathType works with hundreds of different software applications, like MathType with GeoGebra – so show us which you use together with MathType. Who knows, maybe you'll be the MathType equivalent of Rebecca Black!

Use MathType with Learning Management Systems

Many schools, colleges, universities, and other organizations are implementing Learning Management Systems because of their ability to administer online courses easily and cost-effectively. Most Learning Management Systems don't have built-in capability for writing and displaying mathematics, so for many of them we've added special capability to MathType to make this process easy.

Last month we announced that MathType works with over 400 software applications and websites. Among that number are these 20 Learning Management Systems that MathType works with, giving you the ability to include mathematical notation in assessments, announcements, forums, and other modules:

Moodle Blackboard Learn Blackboard Learn -- ANGEL Edition eCollege JoomlaLMS EDU 2.0 Wizlearn Key to School Sakai Claroline

Sparks by Desire2Learn eFront ILIAS it's learning LON-CAPA SchoolFusion OLAT ActiveMath joule Aardvark

If you're using a Learning Management System that is not included in the list above, contact your Learning Management System provider to let them know you need this capability. They like to get feedback from their customers, just like we do.

We'd like to hear about your experiences using math with Learning Management Systems. Leave a comment here and let us know what worked and what didn't, or if there's a Learning Management System you'd like to see in our list.

MathType now brings math suppport to over 400 applications and websites

We've been hard at work for over two years to make MathType work with virtually all applications and websites used by students, teachers, professors, elearning authors, scientists, and engineers. We're making progress every day, but a new technology has helped increase MathType's ability to now work with over 400 applications and websites.

Many blogs, wikis, and other websites are using MathJax to display math, since MathJax works in all modern browsers -- even on portable devices such as iPhone, iPad, and Android devices. MathJax is an open source project led by Design Science, and also involves professional societies such as The American Mathematical Society (AMS), and major educational and scientific publishers. MathJax is in its infancy, so we expect the number of websites that use it to grow tremendously in 2011. Since MathType can copy math from any web page that uses MathJax, we expect a rapid increase in the number of math sites MathType can work with.

Many of the items in our list of what MathType works with were suggested by customers who took our Future MathType survey. Your input is always welcome and makes a huge difference!

Take a look at our MathType Application and Website Compatibility Database and see if your favorite applications are already listed. If you don't find what you're looking for, or want to give us feedback in general, let us know by posting a comment here.

MoboMath Adds Math Handwriting Support to MathType

We've talked with many of you who are using MathType 6.7 with Windows 7, and you've shared with us how much you like being able to handwrite equations and use them in MathType. That capability was formerly limited to the Math Input Panel in Windows 7, so if you're not using the latest version of Windows you may have felt a little left out. That's why we wanted to share this latest bit of news with you.

Enventra Inc. just announced the release of MoboMath version 1.3—complete with special MathType integration! With this new release, you can convert handwriting into publication-quality equations in Windows XP and later. Using a digitizing tablet, mouse, or tablet PC, write math expressions by hand in MoboMath, translate them to formatted equations with a single click, and then drag or paste them into MathType—ready to be used in over 350 applications and websites.

We have detailed instructions for using MathType with Mobomath, and we would like to get your feedback. Let us know what you think about handwriting equations and converting them for use in MathType. What could we add to or change about MathType that would make your job easier?

MathType 6.7 now available for Windows!

It is an exciting time around the offices of Design Science. There has been a lot of momentum and continued growth in our open-source, joint project MathJax to display math properly in all browsers and our development team has just put the finishing touches on the latest version of MathType for Windows!

MathType 6.7 for windows has a bunch of new features:

• Microsoft Office 2010 Support. Don't worry, it also supports Office 2007, 2003, and 2002 (XP) so it is backward compatible.
• New or improved support for:
  • Moodle
  • MoboMath
  • Evernote
  • ...and more. Check out our "Works with" application and see if your favorite applications or websites are in the list of over 350 that work with MathType.
• Equations in email. We've expanded our support for equations in the following applications:
  • Gmail
  • Hotmail
  • Yahoo Mail
  • Outlook
  • Outlook Express
  • Windows Live Mail
  • Windows Mail
• Compatibility with Windows 7, Vista, and XP operating systems
• Generate braille math output: We collaborated with the team over at ViewPlus to generate documents that contain math into braille documents using ViewPlus's Tiger Software Suite

Download the MathType 30-day free trial and let us know what you think!