MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Adobe Digital Editions 1.8 preview now available

tomsem · 07-20-2011, 10:36 PM

http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/digitaleditions1-8/

The focus of this release is 'accessibility' - ability to work with screen readers such as JAWS (Windows) and VoiceOver (Mac).

Note that it does not offer all of the features of the previous version: no annotation or printing, and does not support loading of content onto eReaders via USB. Adobe intends to add these back in a future release.

I just installed the Mac version. It appears now to be a native app (not AIR-based) and has conventional application and context menus (and uses half the memory and no CPU cycles when 'idle'). Numerous shortcut keys are defined for both Library and Reading (including one to toggle display of page numbers shown in the margin). This should be a relief to those who have found ADE's interface to be, let us just say, 'unusual'.

I haven't tried it with VoiceOver yet but will report back when I have.

This version shares the Adobe ID authorization of a previously installed copy of ADE 1.7 (which you'll want to leave on there if you want to transfer content to an eReader via USB).

Most likely the underlying ePub / PDF rendering code is the same, as there's no mention of changes or bug fixes in the release notes, beyond "some transparency rendering features are not supported". Does it still support embedded SWF? Don't know yet. Still no B&N DRM support apparently. Correction: B&N ebooks can now be opened.

[update: actually, it looks like there is a new ePub rendering engine, as hyphenation is supported. Perhaps it is the same, or nearly so, as what's in the latest RMSDK used by Nook et al.]

07-20-2011, 10:36 PM	#1
tomsem Grand Sorcerer Posts: 6,953 Karma: 27060153 Join Date: Apr 2009 Location: USA Device: iPhone 15PM, Kindle Scribe, iPad mini 6, PocketBook InkPad Color 3	Adobe Digital Editions 1.8 preview now available http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/digitaleditions1-8/ The focus of this release is 'accessibility' - ability to work with screen readers such as JAWS (Windows) and VoiceOver (Mac). Note that it does not offer all of the features of the previous version: no annotation or printing, and does not support loading of content onto eReaders via USB. Adobe intends to add these back in a future release. I just installed the Mac version. It appears now to be a native app (not AIR-based) and has conventional application and context menus (and uses half the memory and no CPU cycles when 'idle'). Numerous shortcut keys are defined for both Library and Reading (including one to toggle display of page numbers shown in the margin). This should be a relief to those who have found ADE's interface to be, let us just say, 'unusual'. I haven't tried it with VoiceOver yet but will report back when I have. This version shares the Adobe ID authorization of a previously installed copy of ADE 1.7 (which you'll want to leave on there if you want to transfer content to an eReader via USB). Most likely the underlying ePub / PDF rendering code is the same, as there's no mention of changes or bug fixes in the release notes, beyond "some transparency rendering features are not supported". Does it still support embedded SWF? Don't know yet. Still no B&N DRM support apparently. Correction: B&N ebooks can now be opened. [update: actually, it looks like there is a new ePub rendering engine, as hyphenation is supported. Perhaps it is the same, or nearly so, as what's in the latest RMSDK used by Nook et al.] Last edited by tomsem; 07-21-2011 at 06:26 PM.