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Old 10-27-2011, 11:31 PM   #196
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I may try sticking to Kobo app. It does things alright without some of the weird quirks Bluefire still gives me (today it froze on me multiple times) and that shifted to the right problem. Kobo still doesnt have a clock display, but it displays books well, doesn't flash excessively on page cut (which I feel bluefire does), and the new Kobo Pulse feature coming out sounds very cool (read about on the Vox forums).

Still, I do appreciate Micah's activity and willingness to interact with users, and I will keep checking on Bluefire's updates.

ETA: still greatly disappointed on having bought MegaReader though, based on the lack of any support for italics (unbelievable.. try it out for yourself, formatting is removed), and I just don't like how the margins only affect left and right, it makes the page look strange to my eyes.
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Old 10-28-2011, 12:03 AM   #197
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Yes, I have dropped Megareader too, for the moment. I guess the good news is, we can still have the update when it comes, and Patrick is actively developing.

I've actually settled on Bluefire on iOS5 for now, with just a couple of books for emergencies, and of course Stanza as the main reader on my old iPhone2G. I've actually bought Moon+ Reader Pro for android (and god help *anyone* who starts banging on about Mantano again), because I have made a conscious decision to get a Samsung Note for reading, if Stanza does not reappear on iOS5. In the interim, however, its Bluefire and Stanza on 2 different devices.
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Old 10-28-2011, 03:47 AM   #198
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Originally Posted by dmxwyrw View Post
This is a drive by post but i2reader is pretty good. It has been updated each time a new ios version has dropped. It works with calibre and opds. It has more color themes and customizing features than stanza. Though its not as slick as stanza, I still find it to be one of the best.

I tried the i2reader on my iPad. I wish, wish, wish it worked. It is so buggy that I just can't use it. I have tried things like uninstalling and reloading. When it works, it is magic. The interface isn't wonderful, and it's a bit of a struggle to find out how to do things, but my, it's worth the effort.

Buggy? You can group things in folder and, oh bliss, the folders show in your booklist. But my folders all disappeared. The search engine found the authors I could remember, but the folders never came back.

At one stage, I tried to close the book I was reading. No way. In the end, I had to power down the iPad and restart. Lots of things like that.

I look forward to the next update.
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Old 10-28-2011, 09:04 AM   #199
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I've been going back and forth between Bluefire and Kobo, and reading "Steve Jobs" has solidly placed me back in the Kobo camp. Bluefire doesn't handle images very well, and Kobo has a very nice interface for images.
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Old 10-28-2011, 11:11 AM   #200
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I've been going back and forth between Bluefire and Kobo, and reading "Steve Jobs" has solidly placed me back in the Kobo camp. Bluefire doesn't handle images very well, and Kobo has a very nice interface for images.
What happens with images in bluefire?
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Old 10-28-2011, 11:13 AM   #201
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What happens with images in bluefire?
You can't see the entire image, just a small portion of it, and it can't be moved.

In Kobo, they're resized down to fit the page, and can be resized and scrolled with pinch/zoom gestures.
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Old 10-28-2011, 11:21 AM   #202
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Today, I've called Amazon Germany to inquire about Stanza. They were very nice, tried to be helpful but ultimately failed. :)

Since that wasn't exactly a great success, I've written them what I (immodestly ;) ) consider a rather eloquent email.

Here's the German version: http://www.mailstation.de/Amazon_Stanza_Brief.txt
And here's the English version: http://www.mailstation.de/Amazon_Stanza_Letter.txt

If you want to write to Amazon, I'd suggest to use either one of those directly (just remember to remove my name and add yours! ;) ) or at least the parts you like and just delete the rest.

Whatever you tell them, though, always remain civil, do *not* put a link to the "Revive Stanza" group on Facebook into your email (because telling them about two million users and having 156 (at the time of writing) people there will make them laugh their butts off), try arguing based on facts and point out the difference between the Kindle App and Stanza. Make them feel comfortable and assured that we're a (huge) bunch of weird people and that all those other millions of people will just use the Kindle App anyway. ;)

(Since I'm not a native speaker of English, please feel free to point out any mistakes in the English version.)
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Old 10-28-2011, 12:29 PM   #203
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Philantrop, your English is impeccable. Well written letter!

I particularly liked your release it as open source if you're not going to do anything with it; plus, you nicely mentioned that Kindle is quite different.

Well, what Amazon really needs to do is to roll Stanza features into Kindle for the best of both worlds. Given me Stanza's categorization, justification controls, and font/page coloring options, and I'd be happy to use Kindle.

One of my i-devices has iOS 5 on it, and, sure enough, Stanza just doesn't work. It crashes, gets to different places before it freezes up, starts to work then crashes, etc. It's a mess. There needs to be at least a BIG WARNING on the iTunes web page for Stanza indicating incompatibility with iOS 5. In fact, I may just write Apple about that, although I fear that could lead them to pulling it.

I also discovered that eReader, my other favorite ebook reader, is no longer available on iTunes (probably hasn't been there for ages!)
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Old 10-28-2011, 06:46 PM   #204
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This was an unpleasant surprise this morning after updating last night. As others have said, Stanza whilst old still outperforms the others. As I verified this morning. It is also the app that I use the most on my pad.

Tried bluefire (no calibre support?), i2reader (buggy), megareader (wtf! Who designs interfaces like that), kobo (noisy junk no calibre), iBooks (primitive no calibre), kindle (ok if you like closed systems), and a few others..

At present I think Shubooks looks like the best of the bunch. Had to change the font size without gestures, and set the flag to restart where I left off. Like the dropbox. I was a bit worried when I saw the Chinese all over the AppStore but works well in english.

It isn't Stanza, but it is under active development with Active support.

Amazon should release the stanza code if they aren't going to develop it. I'd spare some time to bug fix it (as well as c++, I speak objective c and java). Grrr...
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Old 10-28-2011, 07:16 PM   #205
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This was an unpleasant surprise this morning after updating last night. As others have said, Stanza whilst old still outperforms the others. As I verified this morning. It is also the app that I use the most on my pad.

Tried bluefire (no calibre support?), i2reader (buggy), megareader (wtf! Who designs interfaces like that), kobo (noisy junk no calibre), iBooks (primitive no calibre), kindle (ok if you like closed systems), and a few others..

At present I think Shubooks looks like the best of the bunch. Had to change the font size without gestures, and set the flag to restart where I left off. Like the dropbox. I was a bit worried when I saw the Chinese all over the AppStore but works well in english.

It isn't Stanza, but it is under active development with Active support.

Amazon should release the stanza code if they aren't going to develop it. I'd spare some time to bug fix it (as well as c++, I speak objective c and java). Grrr...
I did not like shubooks at all. Admittedly I was using the free version, however, it removed entire portions of my ebook, somehow. The same epub file that I was viewing in other readers had a foreword, it was just simply gone in shubooks. There were other quirks. I will test this out again by re-downloading the app to make sure and edit if I was somehow completely crazy when I tested it, but I did test it a couple of times.
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Old 10-28-2011, 07:22 PM   #206
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I did not like shubooks at all. Admittedly I was using the free version, however, it removed entire portions of my ebook, somehow. The same epub file that I was viewing in other readers had a foreword, it was just simply gone in shubooks. There were other quirks. I will test this out again by re-downloading the app to make sure and edit if I was somehow completely crazy when I tested it, but I did test it a couple of times.
I'm not certain, but i believe some e-reader apps begin at the first defined "chapter". Anything before that might be skipped by the app or you may have to "page backwards" to see it.
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Old 10-28-2011, 07:41 PM   #207
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I'm not certain, but i believe some e-reader apps begin at the first defined "chapter". Anything before that might be skipped by the app or you may have to "page backwards" to see it.
Yeah I have apps that do that, but you can go backwards to get to the content. In shubooks I couldn't, as I recall.
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Old 10-28-2011, 07:59 PM   #208
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I'm not certain, but i believe some e-reader apps begin at the first defined "chapter". Anything before that might be skipped by the app or you may have to "page backwards" to see it.
I've tried about 20 epubs to date. But I will be doing a dump of several hundred later at the file level.

However the ePub 'format' is a bit loose. I often see stuff correct in one reader and not in another. One of the things I noticed reading the calibre conversion python was how many corrections there were for various interpretations.

Sugar sync doesn't support Linux. That is where I spend most of my time.
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Old 10-28-2011, 08:00 PM   #209
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Make sure you check out your apps with a variety of books from a variety of sources. The book i'm currently reading in ShuBooks has it chapter heads in Black rather then the "white text on dark blue" which I have defined. In other apps the Chapter Heads DO appear in white just as the text does. Though I do love the swipe up/down for brightness. It's just so sad that there is no "perfect" reader......
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Old 10-28-2011, 09:38 PM   #210
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I've just bought another one this morning: readMe.
http://itunes.apple.com/au/app/readme/id335763726?mt=8

I have sideloaded a bunch of books from various authors, and its cataloging seems very similar to that of Stanza... not exactly the same, but close. One point in its favour

Its configurable for colours, font and font size. Another point in its favour.

No obvious brightness controls built in, but if you save a low light theme and set that as your night theme, should not be toooo much of an issue. Minus a half a point.

Loading books: Sideload via itunes (easy) or Phoneview or similar (also easy).

Download from the web via the builtin web browser, or from your computer. There doesnt seem to be any support for ODPS catalogs, so your stanza catalogs wont work (or they dont seem to). The usual caveats for the computer upload via the builtin server... I haven't yet been able to get mine to work on any reader, regardless of whether its using calibre or not, and my computer and phone are on the same network (I have only one!). Several minus points for these issues.

I'm going to go hit the website for this lot at Unrealmojo and see whats what. This reader feels right, just needs a few tweaks.

[edit] I've just emailed them, and requested a few additional features. However... for my money, this one is really worth a look. Its $1.99 on the au store.

[edit #2] About to sideload a couple hundred books to see how it copes.

[edit #3] I think I better post this as a separate thread

Last edited by kyteflyer; 10-28-2011 at 10:10 PM.
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