Bluefire reader app

[kyteflyer]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

When you go to exit Bluefire on a jailbroken iOS device, the device crashes and needs to reboot.

So it does. Perhaps I wasnt jb last time I used it, but as Micah rightly says, thats because of the jailbreak. However bluefire is the only reader I am aware of, which displays the behaviour.

Some of us have been requesting a two-column landscape mode since the first release of Bluefire. Where is it? Landscape mode on a iPad without two-columns just sucks. Even Amazon figured that one out, and they are not known for listening to customer requests.

[NETLOLA]

Originally Posted by Micah

For you jailbreakers, it really is unfair to give an app poor reviews for problems on jailbroken devices. For some apps it is easy, for others impossible. There's no debugging tools for jailbroken OS's, no simulator, and lots of variables. It is simply not fair to developers to judge them on that. if you jailbreak, and an app does not work, don't use it. but please, please don't mar the reviews or ratings.

I totally agree. With all the variables that occur on a jailbroken device, the Bluefire developers cannot be blamed/judged; it's simply not fair. Who knows what Cydia Apps are causing conflicts, where one jailbroken device will run Bluefire without a problem, while another could very possibly contribute to the underlying cause of erratic behavior on a different device. Cydia's requirements for App submissions cannot possibly be as stringent as those of Apple.

[ssholloway]

Originally Posted by jswinden

Some of us have been requesting a two-column landscape mode since the first release of Bluefire. Where is it? Landscape mode on a iPad without two-columns just sucks. Even Amazon figured that one out, and they are not known for listening to customer requests.

You can get two-column landscape in Bluefire but you have to reduce the font size and the margins. Some ePubs will render into two-columns at a reasonable font size but others require the smallest. Given that, what I want is to be able to force two-columns, regardless of font or margin sizes, as you can do in the Kindle app, which is probably what you're requesting as well.

[Micah]

Originally Posted by jswinden

Some of us have been requesting a two-column landscape mode since the first release of Bluefire. Where is it? Landscape mode on a iPad without two-columns just sucks. Even Amazon figured that one out, and they are not known for listening to customer requests.

You are very right. It sucks we've not done that. The ever-delayed next update (September for sure!) has many new features but not that one. I will get that in the following update later this year. Lame I know, but the best I can offer. This coming update has some cool stuff though:
Export highlights and annotations
Share excerpts on Twitter, email, Facebook
Definition Lookup
Easy Highlighting
Chinese, Japanese, Korean language support (was a huge amount of work)
System fonts as font face choices
Text search results in EPUB as list with Chapter, page# and excerpt

But you are totally right that we should have gotten two columns in there in landscape. My bad.

[Miles3w]

I have a, hopefully, minor request: Please add a back button/guesture for reading. A back funtion would take the reader to the last page displayed, which is useful when the user clicks a link, runs a search, or selects from the index/table of contents.
GoodReader is a good example of this.

I understand this is not likely to make it into the September release, but it would be nice to get this feature soon.

Thanks,

-Miles

BTW this app has replaced all my other ePub readers including Stanza :-) Thank you.

[Delotte231]

Originally Posted by Micah

You are very right. It sucks we've not done that. The ever-delayed next update (September for sure!) has many new features but not that one. I will get that in the following update later this year. Lame I know, but the best I can offer. This coming update has some cool stuff though:
Export highlights and annotations
Share excerpts on Twitter, email, Facebook
Definition Lookup
Easy Highlighting
Chinese, Japanese, Korean language support (was a huge amount of work)
System fonts as font face choices
Text search results in EPUB as list with Chapter, page# and excerpt

But you are totally right that we should have gotten two columns in there in landscape. My bad.

That's great news then. As long as the team is aware of the issue, it should help in making sure that the feature will indeed be added on the future releases

[KenoBeno]

Hey.
Im preparing my crime fiction novel for ebook release. When I test it, it look fine in iBook and sonys ebook reader but in Bluefire the last word of the linie gets and it looks terrible.
Can anybody helt mé?

Yours sincerly

kenoBeno

[Micah]

Well, after much, much hard work, it is finally here! OH MY GOD that was hard work. Bluefire REader V 1.8 is now available on the iTunes App Store. New stuff includes:
Export highlights and annotations to email
Share excerpts on Twitter, email, Facebook
Definition Lookup using Google Define
Easy Highlighting
Chinese, Japanese, Korean language support including vertical writing, R2L page order, Ruby, Kenten, Kinsoku, etc.
System fonts as font face choices (way more font choices now - some cool, some crazy like All Caps fonts, etc - plus all kinds of "special characters" now work - and a ton of additional languages)
Text search results in EPUB as list with Chapter, page# and excerpt
Collections! It is kind of like ibooks, but I think it is even better. Books can exist in multiple collections, and it is really easy to add/remove books (will be even better when we add a filter/search feature)
I know it has been a long wait, but I hope folks really like the new features. We prioritized many of these features based on comments I got here on this forum.

Bad News: No, we have not yet figured out how to fix the problem with jailbroken devices, not for lack of trying for sure. We'll go back to that drawing board now, and dig really deep to try to fix it. It is maddening, and really impacts our ratings and reviews (even though I judge that to be a little unfair)

If you like the new features, please, please rate and review the app on iTunes. We really have worked our asses off to provide a nice EPUB app to our users. We could really use some encouragement to keep at it.

Happy Reading!

[Valkrider]

Micah,

Thanks for the update. I d/l'd it yesterday. I have rated it on the store too.

Keep up the hard work I am a very satisfied user and applaud you for all the effort you put in to this app.

[NETLOLA]

Finally the perfect replacement for Stanza after this latest update! Micah, the hard work you and your team have put into Bluefire is much appreciated, thank you! I will be leaving a great review in the App Store.

[midlifec]

I don't like to rain on your parade but until the margins issue in BF is resolved, ebook readers on iPhone will not find it to be a decent replacement for Stanza. As it is, even with the smallest margins, the text still appears as a ribbon down the middle of the screen.
Now that io6 is here, we Stanza devotees are going to be searching for a replacement again. Bluefire started out strongly - pretty please sort this issue out! I for one would un-jailbreak my phone for Bluefire if it was necessary to do so.

[Micah]

Originally Posted by midlifec

I don't like to rain on your parade but until the margins issue in BF is resolved, ebook readers on iPhone will not find it to be a decent replacement for Stanza. As it is, even with the smallest margins, the text still appears as a ribbon down the middle of the screen.
Now that io6 is here, we Stanza devotees are going to be searching for a replacement again. Bluefire started out strongly - pretty please sort this issue out! I for one would un-jailbreak my phone for Bluefire if it was necessary to do so.

I'm not sure exactly what you are seeing, but I myself have run across a few epubs that have large margins applied in the HTML/CSS formatting - and it is really, really annoying for sure. When you go into the formatting tab in Bluefire Reader, and turn "Use Publisher Formatting" to "off" we try to set the Body Margins to zero. That works for many EPUB's, but the problem is, some EPUB's force margins in various non-standard ways including the use of custom CSS Selectors. With the rendering engine that we use, we can't simply "strip" all formatting from an EPUB, (I wouldn't want to even if we could) we can only over-ride the values applied to "known/standard" CSS Selectors in EPUB files.

If you run into any non-DRM epubs that have that problem, and happen to understand EPUB markup, I'd love to know what markup they are using to set those margins (or post the StyleSheet here). When we know about problematic markup, we can fix it, but we don't have a way to "fix" non-standard markup that we don't know about.

Does that make sense? I understand that this is technical stuff, and ebook readers want the app to "just work". We are trying...

[JSWolf]

When is Bluefire going to be updated for iPhone 5?

[greenyouth]

wait what will happen to the iBook to be launched together with the IPad mini