iBooks... text missing. Making me crazy!

[Oxford-eBooks]

I'm getting some really odd feedback from a client that we're developing a "slightly complex" eBook for (epub ver2). It's got some images in and some boxes, nothing funky, and all stuff we've done before.

But they keep saying that chunks of the content are MISSING when looking on iBooks (Mac).

eg: One chapter has endorsements and they wanted to make sure that the name stays with the quote, so we wrapped it in the div with page-break-inside:avoid

so...

<div class = "group">
<p>Great book!</p>
<p>- A reviewer</p>
</div>

<div class = "group">
<p>Changed my life!</p>
<p>- Another reviewer</p
</div>
:
etc

CSS:
.group{
	page-break-inside:avoid;
}

Looks just fine on ADE, Kindle Sim (mobi export) and in iBooks on my (old) iPad... cant figure out what's going on here.

Also, they say that other chunks are missing after forced page-breaks.

<p>yadda yadda</>
<div style='page-break-before:always;'></div>
<p>start of new page</p>

this has always worked... or at least degraded gracefullyand just not done a page-break.

[Oxford-eBooks]

Okay... so email from the client last night. Looks like we've gotten to the bottom of this.
Seems that they hadn't waited for iBooks to finish indexig the book before looking at it. I know that you sometimes can't turn to later pages while it's doing whatever it does when you first load a book, but also appears to affect bits partway through as well.

So, ultimately not an issue. But not a brilliant customer expeience if you've bought the book.

[kyteflyer]

I remain puzzled as to why people even still use iBooks. Its never been up to snuff and is unlikely ever to be.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by kyteflyer

I remain puzzled as to why people even still use iBooks. Its never been up to snuff and is unlikely ever to be.

iBooks/Books comes with iOS/iPadOS/OSX. So it's there.

[kyteflyer]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

iBooks/Books comes with iOS/iPadOS/OSX. So it's there.

I know.. captive readership and why would anyone go looking for something else. I’m glad I was into iOS before iBooks/Books, otherwise I may also have been trapped.

[OtinG]

Originally Posted by kyteflyer

I know.. captive readership and why would anyone go looking for something else. I’m glad I was into iOS before iBooks/Books, otherwise I may also have been trapped.

The types of people who frequent eBook forums like this one are probably more prone to want a customized reading experience. We tend to be picky about our eBooks and the reader apps that allow us to view them. But a lot of people are not like us. Eventually Apple added iBooks (now named Books) to the iOS and those who were not too picky basically used it out of convenience. It was there, it was free, it got the job done, but Apple never did much to make it compete with 3rd party apps.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by OtinG

The types of people who frequent eBook forums like this one are probably more prone to want a customized reading experience. We tend to be picky about our eBooks and the reader apps that allow us to view them. But a lot of people are not like us. Eventually Apple added iBooks (now named Books) to the iOS and those who were not too picky basically used it out of convenience. It was there, it was free, it got the job done, but Apple never did much to make it compete with 3rd party apps.

Apple tends to focus on making things easy for the 80%. Books is an ok reading experience and it's easy to buy and read books from within the app. It works quite well for the 80% of the people who buy a handful of best seller books a year on their iPad. For me, the key was not to try to side load any books, just use it for the handful of books that I purchased from Apple. No, you can't tweak things just so in Books, but as you say, most people don't care, they just want to read the latest best seller on the airplane.

[JSWolf]

iBooks/Books is terrible on an iPhone because of the silly wide margins. The Kindle app also has the same problem on an iPhone.

[OtinG]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

iBooks/Books is terrible on an iPhone because of the silly wide margins. The Kindle app also has the same problem on an iPhone.

Indeed. The margins being too big has been one of the longest running complaints against Books and Kindle apps on smartphones, yet neither company has done much to address the complaints.

@pwalker8, Apple always treated, and still does treat, iBook/Books as an after thought. Apple went all out with the Music services, but have shown little interest in ebook services. Thankfully other companies offered better services and bookstores.

I will say that Books does work fairly well as a casual PDF reader and it is reasonably easy to open internet page PDFs in it via Share. So convenience is a plus even if feature sets are not.

[lxpose]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

For me, the key was not to try to side load any books

Why was side loading a problem for you?

[tomsem]

I don’t find Kindle app margins an issue on iPhone. It’s better than Books in this respect.

What I do appreciate about Books is that it has excellent Accessibility support, and it treats side-loaded books with respect - they are ‘full citizens’ as it were.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by OtinG

Indeed. The margins being too big has been one of the longest running complaints against Books and Kindle apps on smartphones, yet neither company has done much to address the complaints.

@pwalker8, Apple always treated, and still does treat, iBook/Books as an after thought. Apple went all out with the Music services, but have shown little interest in ebook services. Thankfully other companies offered better services and bookstores.

I will say that Books does work fairly well as a casual PDF reader and it is reasonably easy to open internet page PDFs in it via Share. So convenience is a plus even if feature sets are not.

I suspect that has a lot to do with the anti-trust case. Once it was obvious the fix was in for Amazon, Jobs decided it wasn't worth too much effort. The Books update was a pretty nice update, but they are were more focused on the book store side rather than the reading side.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by lxpose

Why was side loading a problem for you?

The early iterations of iBooks with iCloud didn't handle large libraries well. Really, Books is designed for people who buy best sellers from Apple rather than people with big libraries or buy from a lot of different stores.

[lxpose]

Originally Posted by pwalker8

Books is designed for people who buy best sellers from Apple rather than people with big libraries or buy from a lot of different stores.

Really I don't know why you say this. Does Apple say this?

For myself, I find Books copes perfectly well with a moderately large library and with books obtained from several different stores - and the books are certainly not all best sellers.

I do find it annoying that cover images do not sync from Books on a mac to Books on an iPhone - and I would like a greater choice of fonts. But for myself I am not really aware of other problems.

[pwalker8]

Originally Posted by lxpose

Really I don't know why you say this. Does Apple say this?

For myself, I find Books copes perfectly well with a moderately large library and with books obtained from several different stores - and the books are certainly not all best sellers.

I do find it annoying that cover images do not sync from Books on a mac to Books on an iPhone - and I would like a greater choice of fonts. But for myself I am not really aware of other problems.

All I can do is go by my experience. Maybe it's gotten better since I purged all the side loaded books a couple of years ago.