Books in Browsers?

[tomsem]

This article encapsulates some of what I've been thinking about since the launch of the Google eBooks storefront:

Books In Browsers?

So for example, NookColor, with its browser, should be able to use the forthcoming Amazon Kindle4Web (or the Google web reader for that matter). Will Amazon make sure that Kindle4Web works well on NookColor, or with mobile browsers in general? Will some enterprising storefront create a web ereader that works well with Kindle's webkit browser?

I've been playing around with Reading Google eBooks using Kindle 3 webkit browser and while that experience is not so great (wastes precious space with its UI chrome), it is demonstrative of what might be possible if some enterprising storefronts wanted to target the Kindle browser specifically. It only needs to refresh part of the screen to 'turn' the page - usually from local cache - (rather than having to refresh the entire page), so performance is quite acceptable even on an eink screen.

Next year should see the introduction of Chrome OS tablets, which should be somewhat cheaper than Android tablets, and are the perfect target for a web ereader approach.

Ideally, there would be offline reading capability as well (I think HTML5 and Chrome OS support this), and ability to upload ebooks to cloud storage where the viewer can access them (like IbisReader).