Bluefire reader app

[Cockeye]

Have you got a link to their ebook section? I'm feeling really thick. Been searching and searching with no luck. Thanks in advance.

[jttraverse]

This question may be tangential...but what would it take to have a reader app be able to zoom in on illustrations that are part of an ePub format book? If a reader device (iPad or smartphone) has the capability built-in, then is it the ePub format or the reader app that would cause illustrations to be 'locked' to the page display size?
I've been told that the iPad will let a user zoom in on pictures that are in an ePub document, so maybe it's something that the iPad reader app has enabled. But my experience with the color Nook and my own EVO cellphone is that even though the device will do pinch/zoom, you cannot zoom in on pictures displayed when you're in an ePub book. None of the other reader apps I've tried let me do it either...and I have to wonder why they don't?

[toddos]

That would entirely depend on the app rendering the book. Naive rendering of an epub book is simply to stuff the contents into a browser control, since internally epub is just HTML + CSS. However that doesn't allow for a good experience with image zooming, as you've noticed -- you can zoom the whole page, text and all, but not just the image independently. If a reader app wanted to allow you to zoom images independent of text, it would have to render the epub contents in such a way as to allow the page elements to be controlled separately. It's surely doable, but based on the fact that few readers actually do it I would assume it's not easy or straight-forward to do, and would potentially have a huge impact on rendering.

A nice compromise might be to allow the user to view the image separately. Something like, if the user taps on an image, render just the image and then let the user pinch zoom, rotate, etc on just the image. When done, the user could close the image and end up back in the text flow where they left off.

[jttraverse]

I agree, simply being able to select the images to zoom them separately would be terrific.
In another set of posts I had described how two ePub-formatted magazines--when viewed on the color Nook--would launch a graphical version showing a set of higher-res images as the pages, and these images were zoomable. However, in a normal ePub book or document, the usual white-pages-and-text version, all the images were -not- zoomable. It came down to one specific XML file included in the ePub file that controlled the graphical version.
The point being that if something like this could be done, or just fire up the images in a separate process, it might let the images be zoomable apart from whatever the ePub restrictions are. How about simply pressing on the image and getting a menu option to "View image in default viewer", or something like that. Then the author could put a small version inline and the reader could select to view a larger -zoomable- version it if he or she wanted to.

[Maggie Leung]

Originally Posted by Micah

FYI, I've been slammed lately, but will try to catch up on the posts in this thread tomorrow.

Micah, love the app. Please lemme know if you guys have a PayPal account. I'd be happy to donate toward further development. If no PayPal, I can send a check.

Feature request: Any chance you guys will add a control so the reader can choose which side to tap to turn pages? (Stanza allows such, for instance.)

I haven't used Stanza for a stretch, but it seems they've clunked it up on the controls. I like that Bluefire is more streamlined, but realize that you guys might end up adding more features to serve a wider audience. If that ends up being the case, I'd suggest two versions -- a loaded version and a lighter version.

Thanks to you and your team for a great app.

[Cockeye]

Here here.

Most used app on my iPad since it was released due to library book support. How you did it for free I don't know. I'd have paid!

[Micah]

Originally Posted by Cockeye

Here here.

Most used app on my iPad since it was released due to library book support. How you did it for free I don't know. I'd have paid!

We white label the app for booksellers like Books-A-Million that want to have their own branded ereader in the app store. That is the main way we get revenue. We also do make some fee income and affiliate fees from the bookstores in the Get Books area of the app. If you want to support us (and a big thanks if you do!) the best way to do that is to buy some books from the fine bookstores in Bluefire Reader. You get a good book, our partners are happy, and we make a little money.

[Micah]

Originally Posted by Maggie Leung

Micah, love the app. Please lemme know if you guys have a PayPal account. I'd be happy to donate toward further development. If no PayPal, I can send a check.

Feature request: Any chance you guys will add a control so the reader can choose which side to tap to turn pages? (Stanza allows such, for instance.)

I haven't used Stanza for a stretch, but it seems they've clunked it up on the controls. I like that Bluefire is more streamlined, but realize that you guys might end up adding more features to serve a wider audience. If that ends up being the case, I'd suggest two versions -- a loaded version and a lighter version.

Thanks to you and your team for a great app.

Maggie,
Thanks much for the kind words. The best way to support our efforts is to buy a good book (or two..) from one of the bookstores in the Get Books area of the app. As to the "inverted tapping" - that is on my wish list. I do struggle with finding a balance between simplicity and features. But especially on iPhone, the inverted tapping could be very nice.

[Micah]

Originally Posted by jttraverse

I agree, simply being able to select the images to zoom them separately would be terrific.
In another set of posts I had described how two ePub-formatted magazines--when viewed on the color Nook--would launch a graphical version showing a set of higher-res images as the pages, and these images were zoomable. However, in a normal ePub book or document, the usual white-pages-and-text version, all the images were -not- zoomable. It came down to one specific XML file included in the ePub file that controlled the graphical version.
The point being that if something like this could be done, or just fire up the images in a separate process, it might let the images be zoomable apart from whatever the ePub restrictions are. How about simply pressing on the image and getting a menu option to "View image in default viewer", or something like that. Then the author could put a small version inline and the reader could select to view a larger -zoomable- version it if he or she wanted to.

It would be really nice to be able to zoom in on images. And there are pros and cons of whole page zooming and some way to interact with just the image (which opens up a bunch of interesting possibilities for features). First order of business is supporting "hyperlinked" images. And once we have that, we'll have "hit area" detection, which is a first step toward interacting in more rich ways with the image.

[Micah]

Originally Posted by mallard13

Dooohh.... I just figured out that I was opening Safari on the iPod, instead of Firefox on my Laptop. Your words about saving username/password triggered the 'aha' &
Transfer completed successfully.
Now to add a note to self with a little more detail on the procedure. Thanks to all who responded.

Glad you got it working. Funny, but I've actually done the same thing and been puzzled (but only for a moment). Talk about Doh!

Thanks Toddos for your help.
-Micah

[Micah]

Originally Posted by dgraygrayco

As a book publisher who has done a lot of research into ePub formatting, I know that there are a lot of poorly formatted ePubs out there--including many from the Big Five publishers (who are rushing to get their backlist into ebook format). Ebook formatting is often in the hands of traditional-book designers, who don't fully understand HTML and CSS.

I read ebooks on multiple devices and platforms. One thing I've found is that the more settings I'm able to override, the better my reading experience is. No publisher can guess what type size will be comfortable for me on my iPhone, for example, and should not try to specify one. Same with margins. I'm currently trying to read a HarperCollins ebook using Bluefire on an iPhone, and at a small type size and "no" margin, I'm still getting wide margins--and only averaging 4 words per line, which is too few for sustained reading.

That is rather high on my list to address. I've still not decided to try to completely strip CSS (would be a LOT of work actually) but I am thinking that we should at least change the label of "use publisher formatting" control to "override formatting" (which would also require inverting the on/off toggle) so that it is more clear what is actually going on. And when set to "on" we would go ahead and over-ride the body margins and set them to zero.

Any comments good/bad on that approach?

[Micah]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Link Bluefire to Goodreads. That would make it so much easier to keep
track of what has already been read.

That would be cool. I really like Goodreads. On our radar, but not a small effort...

[Micah]

Originally Posted by sachinwalia

I am a new user of Bluefire Reader. Just discovered today an amazing feature which I have been craving for so long from iBooks - embedded fonts in ePub. I'd love to see following in the reader:

1. Collections (I have so many books and screenplays that this is a must feature.)
2. Cloud based syncing of bookmarks, notes and collections.

Please do plan this in the near future.

both on the plan. We've got our hands pretty full right now. Beyond finishing up our Android app, we need to turn to integrating the RMSDK update from Adobe. This will add some really nice typography features and (optional) hyphenation for justified text - and some other goodies. So between that and some high priority minor features, it will be a while before we can do these larger - yet awesome - features. We are a teeny team, so we can only do so much so fast.

[Micah]

Originally Posted by Shieko

Hi! I adore this software, but there are a few things I've noticed that are preventing me from swapping to BFR as my full time reader.

I love stanza's tap - chapter page number. I find it more useful knowing what page I'm up to in the chapter than what page I'm up to in the book. It helps me pace my reading better around other tasks as I hate putting a book down mid-chapter, as far as I've seen there is no way for me to quickly check chapter length instead of position in the whole book.

Forcing a different font type. I've noticed that in some of my books I cannot override the type of font used in an ebook regardless of 'use publisher's formatting' setting. I find it less enjoyable reading serif-text so not being able to change some books to sanserif is a minor but present drawback.

I love that the night time mode inverts image colour, something I've found other readers lacking. This is a highlight, as trivial as that may seem for some people, but I like having the little chapter break images appear appropriately instead of seeing a white box/image in the middle of my black pages. It helps me enjoy the overall reading experience. A+

Look forward to using the software more and more.

Thanks for your input.

[AintLDS]

Originally Posted by Micah

That is rather high on my list to address. I've still not decided to try to completely strip CSS (would be a LOT of work actually) but I am thinking that we should at least change the label of "use publisher formatting" control to "override formatting" (which would also require inverting the on/off toggle) so that it is more clear what is actually going on. And when set to "on" we would go ahead and over-ride the body margins and set them to zero.

Any comments good/bad on that approach?

I'm not sure if this related, but one of the feaures I find very useful in Stanza is the ability to change margins, line spacing, paragraph spacing, and indent.