iPad Bookmaster - ePub and PDF reader for iOS

[sbaylor]

Originally Posted by mystika1

Hi,
I have a quick question about book master se. Does the app have what I call "extra dimming" where you can dim the screen brightness lower than the device does?

Thanks,

Penny

Yes, extra dimming of the reading views can be controlled if App-Specific Brightness Control is turned on (which is the default on app installation). In this setting, any brightness level less than 100% is dimmer than the current system brightness level.

See the second screenshot on this webpage for more details.

[slantybard]

What resolution/manipulation is being used for custom scene background image? I find that when I choose an image from my photo album, it looks pretty bad as a scene background. I'm not sure if book master is taking a section of the image at a particular area resolution (ie 600x800) and then scaling it or what. I will attach some pics (original image and screenshot of scene)

[slantybard]

Originally Posted by slantybard

What resolution/manipulation is being used for custom scene background image? I find that when I choose an image from my photo album, it looks pretty bad as a scene background. I'm not sure if book master is taking a section of the image at a particular area resolution (ie 600x800) and then scaling it or what. I will attach some pics (original image and screenshot of scene)

My original pic I chose as a background for book master did not upload properly from my iPad. Now attached to this reply. The book master scene image (from above post) looks fuzzier or maybe it's over compressed compared to original image attached below. You can see this better if you look at both images full size.

[slantybard]

Is there any plans to password protect either sets or the app? I can see times where I may not want certain books (ie Stephen king) read by my young kids should they open up book master.

[mystika1]

Originally Posted by sbaylor

Yes, extra dimming of the reading views can be controlled if App-Specific Brightness Control is turned on (which is the default on app installation). In this setting, any brightness level less than 100% is dimmer than the current system brightness level.

See the second screenshot on this webpage for more details.

Thank you! I'm purchasing the app and look forward to using it. 😊

[tbergman]

Originally Posted by sbaylor

Thank you very much for your timely follow-up clarification of the issue!

Thank you for your suggestion and describing the usage scenario. Anyone else seconded?

I also think this would be a nice option. But I'd go a little further. I'd like to see this, and all of the other "decorations" to the screen be optional. I could then have only the title, or percent complete or time etc. visible.

An ideal interface for setting this would allow any of the choices available in any position. So you could have something like
Top Left: PercentComplete
Top Center: Time
Top Right: None
Bottom Left: Title
Bottom Center: None
Bottom Right: None

This would allow the user to decide what to display (or not display) in each of the positions on the screen.

Thanks

[sbaylor]

Originally Posted by slantybard

My original pic I chose as a background for book master did not upload properly from my iPad. Now attached to this reply. The book master scene image (from above post) looks fuzzier or maybe it's over compressed compared to original image attached below. You can see this better if you look at both images full size.

Thank you for taking the time to upload the two images in addition to your verbal description, so that I can try to repeat your experiment. I really appreciate this!

When I create a new scene with the "original" image (img1), the resulting background image (img2) indeed does not look as sharp as the original one, but is still much sharper than the one as posted (img3).

Upon further analysis of the jpeg files, I've found that
img1 is 1536x2048 (iPad retina display resolution) jpeg at 93% compression.
img2 is 1536x2048 png
img3 is 1535x2047 jpeg at 75% compression.

The reason why img3 is not as sharp as img2 is likely due to the 75% (over)compression somehow applied before you uploaded img3.

The reason why img2 is not as sharp as img1 is that img2 is a non-retina down-sampling (768x1024) of img1. This was a historical decision made at a time when a non-retina display iPad was used for development and there was no transparent bookshelf option such that it seemed natural to have a fuzzier background scene than the foreground bookshelf.

We will definitely address this issue soon.

Everything is evolving. So should the apps. Isn't that why we all care an app is in active development?

P.S. To those who have observed that img3 is darker than img1, the reason is because the scene brightness level applied was less than 100%. See the scene brightness control slider above the word "Parallax Effect" in the screenshot on the home page of our website.

[sbaylor]

Originally Posted by slantybard

Is there any plans to password protect either sets or the app? I can see times where I may not want certain books (ie Stephen king) read by my young kids should they open up book master.

Yes, password protection at the app and/or book set level has been on our internal nice-to-have feature list for a long time. But we hesitate to implement without sufficient user input.

I'm glad someone finally raises this password protection issue on this thread of discussion. Anyone else seconded?

Is an app level password protection sufficient? This clearly requires the least amount of work on our side.

However, if you want to let your young kids also enjoy reading on BookMaster, then you may want book set level protection.

Do you want to prevent your kid ust from opening a book or even from knowing the existence of the book (in the Library) in the first place?

More thoughts from everybody? Do you care to have password protection in BookMaster at all?

[slantybard]

Originally Posted by sbaylor

Is an app level password protection sufficient? This clearly requires the least amount of work on our side.

However, if you want to let your young kids also enjoy reading on BookMaster, then you may want book set level protection.

Do you want to prevent your kid ust from opening a book or even from knowing the existence of the book (in the Library) in the first place?

More thoughts from everybody? Do you care to have password protection in BookMaster at all?

App level password would be fine as far as I'm concerned. That is what Bookman does for my comic collection (they aren't quite ready to read Walking Dead and DMZ).

[slantybard]

Originally Posted by sbaylor

When I create a new scene with the "original" image (img1), the resulting background image (img2) indeed does not look as sharp as the original one, but is still much sharper than the one as posted (img3).

Upon further analysis of the jpeg files, I've found that
img1 is 1536x2048 (iPad retina display resolution) jpeg at 93% compression.
img2 is 1536x2048 png
img3 is 1535x2047 jpeg at 75% compression.

The reason why img3 is not as sharp as img2 is likely due to the 75% (over)compression somehow applied before you uploaded img3.

The reason why img2 is not as sharp as img1 is that img2 is a non-retina down-sampling (768x1024) of img1.

Interesting analysis. When I posted the images, both were screen shots taken on the iPad and uploaded without any 3rd party modification as far as I know. When I use any image from the camera roll to develop a background scene, it always turns out quite fuzzy. Thanks for taking the time to reply to my posts.

[slantybard]

Originally Posted by tbergman

I also think this would be a nice option. But I'd go a little further. I'd like to see this, and all of the other "decorations" to the screen be optional. I could then have only the title, or percent complete or time etc. visible.

An ideal interface for setting this would allow any of the choices available in any position. So you could have something like
Top Left: PercentComplete
Top Center: Time
Top Right: None
Bottom Left: Title
Bottom Center: None
Bottom Right: None

This would allow the user to decide what to display (or not display) in each of the positions on the screen.

Thanks

I also would love to see this level of user customization. I don't need to see the title or author of a book when reading it. Thumbs up for the percent complete indicator though.

[MSWallack]

If you decide to enable some sort of password protection, I would prefer that it be on a per-book (or maybe per category) basis. Further, password protected books should not show up on the library screen unless protection was turned off (like in Marvin).

[sbaylor]

Originally Posted by sbaylor

...
The reason why img2 is not as sharp as img1 is that img2 is a non-retina down-sampling (768x1024) of img1. This was a historical decision made at a time when a non-retina display iPad was used for development and there was no transparent bookshelf option such that it seemed natural to have a fuzzier background scene than the foreground bookshelf.

We will definitely address this issue soon.

This issue will be fixed in the next version. The library scene image will automatically look as sharp as the original image, once the next version is installed.

[xoanohn]

Is there a plan for Apple Pencil integration? Ie. Highlighting

[sbaylor]

Originally Posted by xoanohn

Is there a plan for Apple Pencil integration? Ie. Highlighting

Actually no. Apple Pencil is designed to work with the iPad Pro and does not work with any other iPad devices including the iPad Air 2 or iPad mini 4. It seems that no current BookMaster app user action (including highlighting) really requires the new capability of an Apple Pencil.