Feedbooks: New Mobile Edition

Hadrien · 01-22-2008, 08:12 PM

Feedbooks just launched a mobile edition at: http://feedbooks.mobi/

I'd love to get some feedback from Kindle users (screenshots ?) or PDA/Smartphone users.

Currently, the mobile edition will focus on public domain and creative commons books with both Mobipocket & epub available. You can access:

Books
Authors
Types
Recently added books
Top downloaded books
Recommendations
Lists

We'll add support for the rest of our service later (user generated content, RSS).
Alternative URL: http://feedbooks.com/mobile

Hadrien · 01-23-2008, 07:13 AM

Posted 2 screenshots of the mobile website running inside the Android emulator (FBReader is currently being ported to Android: http://www.fbreader.org/FBReaderJ/android/screenshots/)

Jaapjan · 01-23-2008, 08:35 AM

What a nice site! My compliments! I just checked it out on my HTC Touch to see what you made of it. The RSS will certainly be nice, as will the self generated content be.

The only real, tiny bit I'd have to comment is about the URL. In do not know about your own mobile but I would -really- prefer if you added a small piece of PHP to the start page of your site that checked for mobile browsers and does a redirect to the /mobile link. I prefer typing 'feedbooks.com' and let the rest happen magically instead of using my little pen to type twice as much.

The mobile detection script is easily found on google and a header redirect is also easy if you want to implement it.

Hadrien · 01-23-2008, 08:41 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jaapjan

What a nice site! My compliments! I just checked it out on my HTC Touch to see what you made of it. The RSS will certainly be nice, as will the self generated content be.

The only real, tiny bit I'd have to comment is about the URL. In do not know about your own mobile but I would -really- prefer if you added a small piece of PHP to the start page of your site that checked for mobile browsers and does a redirect to the /mobile link. I prefer typing 'feedbooks.com' and let the rest happen magically instead of using my little pen to type twice as much.

The mobile detection script is easily found on google and a header redirect is also easy if you want to implement it.

I'm working on that. I'll edit the first post, you can now use http://feedbooks.mobi

I'll add another alias and redirection next.

merlin13 · 01-23-2008, 11:14 AM

Awesome, thanks a lot for all the work! I just tried it and it worked great!

Just one quick note: Mobipocket on my Dell Axim has huge problems with pagination (this has been going on for years, I hope they'll fix it someday) so I use an older version of microreader for unencrypted Mobi books. Unfortunately, this doesn't recognize the .mobi exension so after download I had to rename it as .prc.

It's not worth for you changing the extension just for people like me, I can rename the files manually; I just wanted you to be aware of this very minor problem.

Again, thanks for all you do, it is great work!

carma54 · 01-23-2008, 11:15 AM

I bookmarked the site on my iPhone - it's easy to read and navigate. Nice site. It will be useful.

radleyp · 01-23-2008, 11:25 AM

What a clever idea! I've installed it on my Kindle and it works as advertised. Just keep adding books.

Hadrien · 01-23-2008, 06:30 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by merlin13

Awesome, thanks a lot for all the work! I just tried it and it worked great!

Just one quick note: Mobipocket on my Dell Axim has huge problems with pagination (this has been going on for years, I hope they'll fix it someday) so I use an older version of microreader for unencrypted Mobi books. Unfortunately, this doesn't recognize the .mobi exension so after download I had to rename it as .prc.

It's not worth for you changing the extension just for people like me, I can rename the files manually; I just wanted you to be aware of this very minor problem.

Again, thanks for all you do, it is great work!

Yeah, I can't do much in this case. There's multiple versions of Mobipocket files, and in our case, we use the one that support extended metadata and the correct extension in this case is .mobi

Quote:

I bookmarked the site on my iPhone - it's easy to read and navigate. Nice site. It will be useful.

Can you read Mobipocket or epub on an iPhone through ? I might have to add a PDF with the right size for the iPhone, but I hate the fact that Safari can't download PDF to the main memory.

Quote:

What a clever idea! I've installed it on my Kindle and it works as advertised. Just keep adding books.

Glad that you like it. Downloading books from Feedbooks is super easy on the Kindle, and I hope that we'll add RSS feeds very soon too.
For our collection of books, we also depend on our users. Uploading a book is pretty easy and once it's online, it's available in PDF/Mobipocket/epub.

Jaapjan · 01-24-2008, 02:45 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hadrien

Yeah, I can't do much in this case. There's multiple versions of Mobipocket files, and in our case, we use the one that support extended metadata and the correct extension in this case is .mobi

Can you read Mobipocket or epub on an iPhone through ? I might have to add a PDF with the right size for the iPhone, but I hate the fact that Safari can't download PDF to the main memory.

Glad that you like it. Downloading books from Feedbooks is super easy on the Kindle, and I hope that we'll add RSS feeds very soon too.
For our collection of books, we also depend on our users. Uploading a book is pretty easy and once it's online, it's available in PDF/Mobipocket/epub.

Depending on how neat you want to make it you can also derive some 'recommended' format for some platforms that visit the site. If you see the kindle browser/platform, offer a AZW by default and some alternatives.

It's just an idea.

mores · 01-24-2008, 04:06 AM

Neat, works fine and is pretty on my SonyEricsson P1i.

I second the auto-redirection motion, since I now expect a site, that I visit with my desktop, to have a simpler version for when I visit with my mobile.

Another thing that kind of bothers my graphical eye is the indents of all the items that have that little book in front of it. On my P1i with the integrated browser (not opera mini) that indent is about 40 pixels.
And the headline is the same size as the rest of the text.
I dunno how to make a screenshot of my display. Maybe I can take a picture

Jaapjan · 01-24-2008, 07:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mores

Neat, works fine and is pretty on my SonyEricsson P1i.

I second the auto-redirection motion, since I now expect a site, that I visit with my desktop, to have a simpler version for when I visit with my mobile.

Another thing that kind of bothers my graphical eye is the indents of all the items that have that little book in front of it. On my P1i with the integrated browser (not opera mini) that indent is about 40 pixels.
And the headline is the same size as the rest of the text.
I dunno how to make a screenshot of my display. Maybe I can take a picture

You are probably using pixels to indicate this indent. You can better use 'em' then instead of 'px'. Or even a percentage. With mobile browsers this will likely work better. I'd try the 'em' first here.

Hadrien · 01-24-2008, 07:20 AM

Hmm you mean the indent for the author's name ?

As for the auto-redirection, we're working on that.
Not sure that only displaying the right format based on the user agent is the best choice, but we could highlight the correct format. Pretty neat idea indeed ^^

Jaapjan · 01-24-2008, 07:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Hadrien

Hmm you mean the indent for the author's name ?

As for the auto-redirection, we're working on that.
Not sure that only displaying the right format based on the user agent is the best choice, but we could highlight the correct format. Pretty neat idea indeed ^^

Noone said anything about only displaying the right format but a recommended/highlighted one as you say based on user agent. It wont always work but with Kindle's, iPhone and iLiads the HTML headers should be enough to help you see what you're dealing with.

For the other mobile browsers it is harder to determine it but you can still do a recommendation.

Edit:

Incidentally, running www.feedbooks.com through the W3C validator is ... scary. Especially when you claim to be xhtml 1.0 strict compliant. That applies to the mobile version too ... but that one has only 4 errors and should be relatively easy to fix and make compliant again.

Hadrien · 01-24-2008, 08:21 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jaapjan

Noone said anything about only displaying the right format but a recommended/highlighted one as you say based on user agent. It wont always work but with Kindle's, iPhone and iLiads the HTML headers should be enough to help you see what you're dealing with.

For the other mobile browsers it is harder to determine it but you can still do a recommendation.

Edit:

Incidentally, running www.feedbooks.com through the W3C validator is ... scary. Especially when you claim to be xhtml 1.0 strict compliant. That applies to the mobile version too ... but that one has only 4 errors and should be relatively easy to fix and make compliant again.

The current homepage for www is not what we have in mind for the final version, we'll make everything fully compliant once we've reached this point.

For the mobile version, I'll correct the mistakes today.

Update: http://validator.w3.org/check?uri=ht...Inline&group=0

Jaapjan · 01-24-2008, 09:55 AM

Please do keep in mind that I am only offering suggestions! Not complaints. I have no use for your site.

That said, I do have internet on my phone here and so do many of those I know around me. However, we pay per byte of data received. It might be worthwhile to convert, for the mobile site, many of the small icon images and the header to lesser color depth then the full 32 bits. It can shave off half the loading time in most cases without visible loss of quality.

I didn't try much with it in depth just passed your image through photoshop and tried a few different qualities. You might want to check in that more. Because if it saves half the loading time & half the filesize it'll also save half the money.

Also a number of pages have a large amount of text before the list of books (for a mobile screen). You might want to revise the length of the text here or there to accomodate small screens.

An example: Welcome to the mobile edition of Feedbooks !
Turn that to: Welcome to Feedbooks Mobile!

You might think, is that all ? But it saves a lot of screen room. I'm not going to try and spell rea--les-state something.

Ran the site through OpenWave browser (7), Opera Mini and Internet explore (mobile). Looks good!

01-22-2008, 08:12 PM	#1
Hadrien Feedbooks.com Co-Founder Posts: 2,263 Karma: 145123 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Paris, France Device: Sony PRS-t-1/350/300/500/505/600/700, Nexus S, iPad	Feedbooks: New Mobile Edition Feedbooks just launched a mobile edition at: http://feedbooks.mobi/ I'd love to get some feedback from Kindle users (screenshots ?) or PDA/Smartphone users. Currently, the mobile edition will focus on public domain and creative commons books with both Mobipocket & epub available. You can access: Books Authors Types Recently added books Top downloaded books Recommendations Lists We'll add support for the rest of our service later (user generated content, RSS). Alternative URL: http://feedbooks.com/mobile Attached Thumbnails

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01-23-2008, 07:13 AM	#2
Hadrien Feedbooks.com Co-Founder Posts: 2,263 Karma: 145123 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Paris, France Device: Sony PRS-t-1/350/300/500/505/600/700, Nexus S, iPad	Posted 2 screenshots of the mobile website running inside the Android emulator (FBReader is currently being ported to Android: http://www.fbreader.org/FBReaderJ/android/screenshots/)

01-23-2008, 08:35 AM	#3
Jaapjan Avid reader Posts: 262 Karma: 132 Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: The Netherlands Device: HTC Touch Diamond, iLiad Book Edition	What a nice site! My compliments! I just checked it out on my HTC Touch to see what you made of it. The RSS will certainly be nice, as will the self generated content be. The only real, tiny bit I'd have to comment is about the URL. In do not know about your own mobile but I would -really- prefer if you added a small piece of PHP to the start page of your site that checked for mobile browsers and does a redirect to the /mobile link. I prefer typing 'feedbooks.com' and let the rest happen magically instead of using my little pen to type twice as much. The mobile detection script is easily found on google and a header redirect is also easy if you want to implement it.

01-23-2008, 11:14 AM	#5
merlin13 Junior Member Posts: 4 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jan 2005 Device: Dell Axim x50v	Awesome, thanks a lot for all the work! I just tried it and it worked great! Just one quick note: Mobipocket on my Dell Axim has huge problems with pagination (this has been going on for years, I hope they'll fix it someday) so I use an older version of microreader for unencrypted Mobi books. Unfortunately, this doesn't recognize the .mobi exension so after download I had to rename it as .prc. It's not worth for you changing the extension just for people like me, I can rename the files manually; I just wanted you to be aware of this very minor problem. Again, thanks for all you do, it is great work!

01-23-2008, 11:15 AM	#6
carma54 Member Posts: 12 Karma: 10 Join Date: Jan 2008 Location: Port Angeles, WA; USA Device: Sony PRS-300	I bookmarked the site on my iPhone - it's easy to read and navigate. Nice site. It will be useful.

01-23-2008, 11:25 AM	#7
radleyp Evangelist Posts: 499 Karma: 20623 Join Date: Jan 2003 Location: North Salem & NYC, NY Device: Kindle Global, iphone4, ipad	What a clever idea! I've installed it on my Kindle and it works as advertised. Just keep adding books.

01-24-2008, 04:06 AM	#10
mores Guru Posts: 834 Karma: 102419 Join Date: Sep 2007 Location: Vienna, Austria Device: iPhone	Neat, works fine and is pretty on my SonyEricsson P1i. I second the auto-redirection motion, since I now expect a site, that I visit with my desktop, to have a simpler version for when I visit with my mobile. Another thing that kind of bothers my graphical eye is the indents of all the items that have that little book in front of it. On my P1i with the integrated browser (not opera mini) that indent is about 40 pixels. And the headline is the same size as the rest of the text. I dunno how to make a screenshot of my display. Maybe I can take a picture

01-24-2008, 07:20 AM	#12
Hadrien Feedbooks.com Co-Founder Posts: 2,263 Karma: 145123 Join Date: Nov 2006 Location: Paris, France Device: Sony PRS-t-1/350/300/500/505/600/700, Nexus S, iPad	Hmm you mean the indent for the author's name ? As for the auto-redirection, we're working on that. Not sure that only displaying the right format based on the user agent is the best choice, but we could highlight the correct format. Pretty neat idea indeed ^^

01-24-2008, 09:55 AM	#15
Jaapjan Avid reader Posts: 262 Karma: 132 Join Date: Mar 2005 Location: The Netherlands Device: HTC Touch Diamond, iLiad Book Edition	Please do keep in mind that I am only offering suggestions! Not complaints. I have no use for your site. That said, I do have internet on my phone here and so do many of those I know around me. However, we pay per byte of data received. It might be worthwhile to convert, for the mobile site, many of the small icon images and the header to lesser color depth then the full 32 bits. It can shave off half the loading time in most cases without visible loss of quality. I didn't try much with it in depth just passed your image through photoshop and tried a few different qualities. You might want to check in that more. Because if it saves half the loading time & half the filesize it'll also save half the money. Also a number of pages have a large amount of text before the list of books (for a mobile screen). You might want to revise the length of the text here or there to accomodate small screens. An example: Welcome to the mobile edition of Feedbooks ! Turn that to: Welcome to Feedbooks Mobile! You might think, is that all ? But it saves a lot of screen room. I'm not going to try and spell rea--les-state something. Ran the site through OpenWave browser (7), Opera Mini and Internet explore (mobile). Looks good!