[pittendrigh]

I want to make ebooks in epub3 format. I've installed various readers and creators (readium and calibre etc) on my desktop linux box.

I'm also reading Epub3 Best Practices from O'Reilly.

I have an entry-level question. I am probably missing something obvious.

I have several linux-based readers but they all seem to require the user to download the epub file to the local file system before reading it.

If the publisher doesn't care about DRM why can't the epub file be read directly, inside a browser, from a file (or an unzipped epub3 file) located on a remote web server? Why do I have to download the epub to the local file system first? (or do I?)

If epub3 could be read from a properly extended browser, from a remote location, without downloading to the local file system, wouldn't epub3 then become an interesting and entirely new way to create a website that looked and acted like an book? Complete with TOC navigation etc?