Windows 8 Epub reader with the following features?

[downloaderfan]

Alright, I first thought this would be easy, but apparently I'm not able to find what I want, thus I'm posting it here now.

I recently got an engineering book in EPUB format, and all I wanted was a software which supported the following:

Vertical scrolling instead of paginated
Ability to make annotations

Just these 2, But I'm not able to find any windows software with the above 2 features.

Calibre, FBReader both don't support highlighting
Digital editions, mobipocket don't support vertical scrolling
Coolreader just kept crashing when I tried to open the epub file

If anyone knows a software with contains the above 2 features, plz mention.

[eschwartz]

Have you tried the Freda Metro app?

[downloaderfan]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Have you tried the Freda Metro app?

Yeah, also tried 4 metro apps, freda was one of them.
Didn't find an option for vertical scrolling in freda.

Two of them i.e Bookviser reader and epub reader 8 just failed to load the EPUB file, I waited 10 minutes after selecting the epub file and both the apps still said 'loading'

The remaining one named 'Cover' did open the file but failed to render it properly.

[eschwartz]

Sorry, got nothing else for you.

I don't know much about the options on Windows 8, other than the actual existence of a handful of Metro apps that I've seen mentioned here.

...

How important is vertical scrolling?

[downloaderfan]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Sorry, got nothing else for you.

I don't know much about the options on Windows 8, other than the actual existence of a handful of Metro apps that I've seen mentioned here.

...

How important is vertical scrolling?

Vertical continuous scrolling is important because, since it's an engineering book, it has diagrams followed by explanations. However if the diagrams and explanations are on different pages, then I have to go read a part of the explanation, look at the diagram on the preceding page, again read the explanation little more, again go back to look at the diagram. It's inconvenient. Sad to see no ebook reader on windows has such a basic feature. I'm just thinking of firing up moon+reader on an android emulator on my PC

[cybmole]

Convert it . From epub into something better supported ?
Word doc, rich text.. those will scroll and take annotations

[Jim Chapman]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Have you tried the Freda Metro app?

I'm in the process of updating Freda for Windows 10, and as soon as that update is complete, you will have this feature on Windows 10 (it already exists for Windows Phone 8.1, but not for Windows 8.1). So as long as you're willing to make the upgrade to Windows 10, your problem will be solved

To make Freda provide the scrolling experience you want:
1) in the settings screen set 'page change motion' to 'slide'
2) in the settings screen, tap the 'controls' link (blue text at the bottom of the page), and the 'controls' screen will pop up. Now adjust the first setting, 'swipe action' so it says 'change page', then tap the check button to save.
3) on the reader screen, drag your finger vertically

The page will move as you drag your finger, and when you stop moving your finger it will stop moving - so you can easily position the pages with the bottom of one page and the top of the next page both on the screen together. Freda will still show page numbers - but if you want to get rid of them too, go into the settings screen and set 'page # style' to 'none'.

Right now, you can see this functionality in the Windows 10 app 'Freda-Chinese'; it will come to 'Freda' and 'Freda+' in the next few days (just as soon as I have finished writing the documentation).

Hope that helps; if you need more, please let me know (jim@turnipsoft.co.uk)

P.S. The Windows 10 Freda app also makes it somewhat easier to add and manage annotations (though it calls them 'bookmarks')

[downloaderfan]

Originally Posted by cybmole

Convert it . From epub into something better supported ?
Word doc, rich text.. those will scroll and take annotations

Well, for conversion, the kind of formats I can think of is word,pdf etc. The problem with the word/pdf formats is that they don't natively support text reflow.
Most of the times, I use my laptop to read, but I sometimes also use my 7 inch android tablet, when I'm outside home especially. Since pdf/word don't natively support text reflow, the text gets too small for me to be comfortable and I'll have to zoom in and out every now and then making it very uncomfortable. Sure some PDF/word apps do reflow text, but that introduces formatting errors, especially in a book which contains a lot of tables/formulas.
Such problems don't exist on an EPUB file, and it works best even across devices of different sizes. And that's the reason I prefer EPUB over others.

[downloaderfan]

Originally Posted by Jim Chapman

I'm in the process of updating Freda for Windows 10, and as soon as that update is complete, you will have this feature on Windows 10 (it already exists for Windows Phone 8.1, but not for Windows 8.1). So as long as you're willing to make the upgrade to Windows 10, your problem will be solved

To make Freda provide the scrolling experience you want:
1) in the settings screen set 'page change motion' to 'slide'
2) in the settings screen set 'swipe to select' to 'no'
3) on the reader screen, drag your finger vertically

The page will move as you drag your finger, and when you stop moving your finger it will stop moving - so you can easily position the pages with the bottom of one page and the top of the next page both on the screen together. Freda will still show page numbers - but if you want to get rid of them too, go into the settings screen and set 'page # style' to 'none'.

Right now, you can see this functionality in the Windows 10 app 'Freda-Chinese'; it will come to 'Freda' and 'Freda+' in the next few days (just as soon as I have finished writing the documentation).

Hope that helps; if you need more, please let me know (jim@turnipsoft.co.uk)

P.S. The Windows 10 Freda app also makes it somewhat easier to add and manage annotations (though it calls them 'bookmarks')

I really do appreciate from the bottom of my heart that at least 1 developer is willing to make a decently featured windows ebook reader. Of all the 4 modern/metro apps I tried, freda was the only one which loaded the epub file properly.

But, the thing is, when I bought my laptop, it came with windows 8. The first thing I tried was update it to 8.1. But got stuck on a boot loop and I had refresh my laptop on day 2 after buying it. Because of that, I gave up the idea of updating. Now that my PC has over 40 plus software(all of them I use at least once a month), I'm pretty sure I'm going to run into compatibility issues if I upgrade this soon. But anyway, it's not anyone else's fault. As I said before, I really do appreciate the effort after having such an experience with other ebook readers.

[cybmole]

Fyi, You cannot free update 8 to 10, without going via 8.1 I would backup all data and try again 8 to 8.1, then to 10. Windows utilities should check and say if any software is not compatible

[downloaderfan]

Originally Posted by cybmole

Fyi, You cannot free update 8 to 10, without going via 8.1 I would backup all data and try again 8 to 8.1, then to 10. Windows utilities should check and say if any software is not compatible

Yeah I know about that, software incompatibility is just one of the reasons why I'm not upgrading this soon, windows utilities telling me whether a software is incompatible or not doesn't solve the compatibility issue.

The other reason being, none of the drivers for my lenovo laptop model are right now available for windows 10. At this point, I can't spent time hunting and solving each and every problem that windows 10 puts in front of me.

[eschwartz]

I don't think this will help either...

But FWIW Kovid Goyal has had annotations on his TODO list for calibre for a while.
At the moment he is massively busy rewriting the content server, though I have hopes that the server rewrite will pave the way for a native browser reader, which in turn requires revamping the ebook-viewer (once you're there anyway...).

Just you wait, it will support annotations/bookmarking one of these days!

[cybmole]

What software do you think is incompatible ?

[eschwartz]

Aren't driver issues -- including the ones the internet is loudly buzzing about, all over the place -- enough of a problem???

[cybmole]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

Aren't driver issues -- including the ones the internet is loudly buzzing about, all over the place -- enough of a problem???

laptops/tablets, maybe yes - desktops with mainstream AMD / Nvidia cards are fine, so is the ubiquitous reaktek audio. All of those companies released W10 drivers

but it's easy enough to look in device manager then google your specific audio/video device(s)+ win 10 to check for possible issues.

OP is already at win 8 so will not have any ancient legacy AV stuff ?

the only thing that still bugs me with win 10 is the slow boot up times. when I had the w10 preview on clean install test rig it was booting in ~10 secs. with my upgrades from win 7 / 8 it is as slow as win 7 was, or even slower.
A clean install + having to redo all software would be way too much hassle for me.