MobileRead Forums - View Single Post - Newbie question about reading epubs online

pittendrigh · 11-11-2016, 07:18 AM

I was going to delete one post only which seemed obsolete because of the https://github.com/satorumurmur/bibi link I found.

I'm still working on my version. Perhaps a month away from something useful. The bibi software is almost entirely Javascript. I'm working (and almost finished) on a more old fashioned PHP/Sessions way to read an unzipped epub3 on the server, that displays TOC and chapters and pages so it appears much the same way as in Readium. But my way happens entirely on the server with no requirement for the user to install anything. They can surf right to an epub3 which is either the entire book or perhaps a subset of the entire book.

The compressed epub will be there too, so if they purchase the book (after freely viewing a subset of pages) they can then download the epub and view it in more traditional client-side ways.

This is important to me because the majority of my customers are fishermen or carpenter boat builders who don't have an ebook reader installed. Expecting them to jump that many hoops keeps them away from the PayPal button.

Once I get them hooked with the online ebook bait perhaps they will take that leap. I can provide links to Readium and what ever else.

I sell passwords to access otherwise hidden how-to-do-it boat building pages already. Since 2000 or so. I've been doing this for a long time. Reformatting my boat building pages as a fully compliant epub will improve my system.

Finally. My system returns the TOC and ebook pages content as the content of a DIV. Bibi's Javascript requires HTML HEAD and BODY tags, so with his system the only way to embed the epub output inside a global website layout, complete with navigation to other things, would be to use an IFRAME. That's not a showstopper. IFRAMEs are not as bad as some try to make them out to be.

But IFRAMEs do have their problems. I like the idea of an epub as the contents of a DIV.

11-11-2016, 07:18 AM	#31
pittendrigh Connoisseur Posts: 78 Karma: 1332336 Join Date: Mar 2011 Location: montana Device: none	I was going to delete one post only which seemed obsolete because of the https://github.com/satorumurmur/bibi link I found. I'm still working on my version. Perhaps a month away from something useful. The bibi software is almost entirely Javascript. I'm working (and almost finished) on a more old fashioned PHP/Sessions way to read an unzipped epub3 on the server, that displays TOC and chapters and pages so it appears much the same way as in Readium. But my way happens entirely on the server with no requirement for the user to install anything. They can surf right to an epub3 which is either the entire book or perhaps a subset of the entire book. The compressed epub will be there too, so if they purchase the book (after freely viewing a subset of pages) they can then download the epub and view it in more traditional client-side ways. This is important to me because the majority of my customers are fishermen or carpenter boat builders who don't have an ebook reader installed. Expecting them to jump that many hoops keeps them away from the PayPal button. Once I get them hooked with the online ebook bait perhaps they will take that leap. I can provide links to Readium and what ever else. I sell passwords to access otherwise hidden how-to-do-it boat building pages already. Since 2000 or so. I've been doing this for a long time. Reformatting my boat building pages as a fully compliant epub will improve my system. Finally. My system returns the TOC and ebook pages content as the content of a DIV. Bibi's Javascript requires HTML HEAD and BODY tags, so with his system the only way to embed the epub output inside a global website layout, complete with navigation to other things, would be to use an IFRAME. That's not a showstopper. IFRAMEs are not as bad as some try to make them out to be. But IFRAMEs do have their problems. I like the idea of an epub as the contents of a DIV.