Bluefire reader app

[Faterson]

Micah,

Here are, to my mind, the top 4 features that Bluefire Reader needs to improve in order to be able to compete with Marvin. As I see it, Marvin is by now clearly superior over Bluefire Reader, despite being a much younger app. Marvin has now completely replaced Stanza for me -- in fact, it's now better than Stanza ever was.

The one theoretical advantage Bluefire has over Marvin -- electronic library lending -- is not available for me, because like Wulf said, nothing like that seems to exist here in Central Europe. As to DRM-protected books: whenever I buy a book, I'm convinced I'm entitled to read it using the best currently available software, and I proceed accordingly.

Here are the 3 things Bluefire Reader is currently missing:

• paragraph spacing (very important)
• line spacing (less important)
• better annotations functionality (crucial!)

The last one is the dealbreaker for me. If I remember correctly, Bluefire only offers a single highlight color. That's not enough -- Marvin and iBooks both offer 5 highlight colours. Marvin allows you to export, import, share and restore all highlights and annotations using the HTML or CSV formats -- it's absolutely unique in this regard, as far as I'm aware. Until Bluefire equals Marvin in this respect, I can't even consider reading books in Bluefire.

In addition to the 3 missing features listed above, there is that long-standing Bluefire bug discussed earlier in this thread: difficulty to highlight words with ease. Try highlighting the same passage in Bluefire and Marvin -- it's a breeze in Marvin, but it's a struggle in Bluefire.

In any case, good luck with your app, Micah, and I hope you can give Marvin some serious competition in future! Competition will only make both Bluefire and Marvin better and better.

[fekhner]

For my needs epub3 support is essential. Almost the entire production of mathematics and physics papers with equations is latex to pdf. Latex to epub3 is currently already possible but what is missing is epub3 capable readers for the ipad or android tablets.

[Micah]

Interesting that you put para spacing above line spacing. I would not have expected that. I personally really want line spacing (we have it on Android) as many fonts have too tight of default line spacing for my taste. (It is different for each font - and defined by the creator) - which we faithfully render in BFR. On iOS, I now use Asian font sets like Hiragino Mincho to read, as they have much wider line spacing, and support western chars.

I get that para spacing is nice, but curious what you find critical about it.

Do other readers of this forum feel para spacing is the top prio?

Also interesting that you really value the muilti color coded highlighting. On my wish list is to automatically use different colors for when a highlight has a note attached or not, and enable users to choose the two colors. I thought that having multi colors was kind of extraneous - mostly for education, and there are apps specific to that space (e.g. Subtext, VitalSource). Maybe just my own personal proclivities there though. If I may ask, what do you use the different colors for?

As to annotations, our first step is to sync location in book across devices. Then next step is to sync annotations. We do have an "export to email" for annotations/highlights. Do you find the import/export as XML useful or important? if we had annotation sync?

making text selection better will probably have to wait until we put in a new EPUB rendering engine (for EPUB3 ad EPUB2). So I don't expect to "win you back" anytime soon, but I do appreciate the feedback.

-Micah

[Jane12]

Originally Posted by Micah

... I personally really want line spacing (we have it on Android) as many fonts have too tight of default line spacing for my taste. (It is different for each font - and defined by the creator) - which we faithfully render in BFR. On iOS, I now use Asian font sets like Hiragino Mincho to read, as they have much wider line spacing, and support western chars.

Oh wow. I had no idea you could increase line-spacing by switching fonts. Just tried Hiragino Mincho and wow, that makes a world of difference. Thanks for the tip!

Do other readers of this forum feel para spacing is the top prio?

No. For me the top priorities are line-spacing (less so now that I know about Hiragino) and hyphenation control (because I proofread, and having auto-hyphenation makes it hard to catch extraneous hyphens because you can't tell if it's embedded in the ebook or a result of auto-hyphenation).

BTW, I love BFR's "export to email" for annotations/highlights feature. Nice work!

[Micah]

Originally Posted by Jane12

Oh wow. I had no idea you could increase line-spacing by switching fonts. Just tried Hiragino Mincho and wow, that makes a world of difference. Thanks for the tip!



No. For me the top priorities are line-spacing (less so now that I know about Hiragino) and hyphenation control (because I proofread, and having auto-hyphenation makes it hard to catch extraneous hyphens because you can't tell if it's embedded in the ebook or a result of auto-hyphenation).

BTW, I love BFR's "export to email" for annotations/highlights feature. Nice work!

OK, line spacing is in the new version in iTunes App Store. Also includes the new "image viewer" feature that enables pan/zoom, sharing, printing of images.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Micah

OK, line spacing is in the new version in iTunes App Store. Also includes the new "image viewer" feature that enables pan/zoom, sharing, printing of images.

Can you please make it so when we set the options that hyphenation is not turned off?

[Jane12]

Originally Posted by Micah

OK, line spacing is in the new version in iTunes App Store.

Oh wow, oh wow. Thank you so much! Good-bye Stanza, hello Bluefire Reader.

Is hyphenation control still in the works? That's the last item on my Bluefire wish-list.

[Jane12]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Can you please make it so when we set the options that hyphenation is not turned off?

This is interesting. Sometimes it seems that hyphenation is off and sometimes it's clearly on. Didn't realize there was a pattern until you mentioned this. Now I really am in heaven -- linespacing and hyphenation control (of a temporary and clumsy but nevertheless effective sort )

[Faterson]

Line spacing, while nice, is (to me) negligible in importance, compared to paragraph spacing, still not offered by BFR. Also, as previously mentioned, Bluefire's current annotation capabilities are too elementary to be really useful for me.

I still owe Micah a reply to his earlier post, for which I apologize; will get to it asap.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Jane12

This is interesting. Sometimes it seems that hyphenation is off and sometimes it's clearly on. Didn't realize there was a pattern until you mentioned this. Now I really am in heaven -- linespacing and hyphenation control (of a temporary and clumsy but nevertheless effective sort )

When you go to change the settings, hyphenation is turned off. Then you have to close Bluefire and reopen it to get hyphenation back. That is just a poor way to handle things. Just give us an option for hyphenation on or off and stop mucking about with it.

[midlifec]

Well thanks for the line spacing tweak, developers. Almost there! Now please can we have:
1) further margin options - need the text to run right up to the edge of the screen on iphone to make the most of the small reading area
2) better library organisation - by author especially
3) paragraph spacing would be nice but not essential
4) the ability to customise so that touching either side of the screen is next page

I had fallen out of love with BF but the latest update is encouraging. Would pay good money for those features which would make it more like our well loved Stanza

[Micah]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

When you go to change the settings, hyphenation is turned off. Then you have to close Bluefire and reopen it to get hyphenation back. That is just a poor way to handle things. Just give us an option for hyphenation on or off and stop mucking about with it.

Yes, we have a pesky bug with that which has been like a great easter egg hunt in talll grass. Irritating to say the least.

[Micah]

Originally Posted by midlifec

Well thanks for the line spacing tweak, developers. Almost there! Now please can we have:
1) further margin options - need the text to run right up to the edge of the screen on iphone to make the most of the small reading area
2) better library organisation - by author especially
3) paragraph spacing would be nice but not essential
4) the ability to customise so that touching either side of the screen is next page

I had fallen out of love with BF but the latest update is encouraging. Would pay good money for those features which would make it more like our well loved Stanza

#1 agreed, and tricky. Many times the CSS used for margins is actually meaningful (e.g. in Poetry). Right now, we only "increase" margins by "shrinking" the canvas (no CSS change), never reduce them (meaning if the creator of an ebook inserted margins for some reason (should be very rare) we don't muck with it. I hear you though, it is incredibly frustrating when an ebook has margins (I tend to just edit the CSS). You are right though, we should probably have a way to "force" no margins.

2. We have a sort by author option already - not sure I understand the comment?

3. Yes, Para spacing is high on my list. Sounds easy, and relatively is, but testing is more time consuming than many might imagine.

4. Yes, we absolutely need this

In hindsight, I'd have prioritized features a little different (e.g. collections probably should have come after a lot of other things) but live and learn.
-Micah

[Faterson]

Micah, please take a look in the Marvin thread where I'm explaining im my most recent post why at least 5 highlight colours are crucial for me in e-reader software.

While I would welcome unlimited highlight colours in Marvin, I can understand why Kris is limiting them to 5. However, only a single highlight colour is unacceptable to me, especially on any screen offering the display of millions of colours. A single highlight colour has always been a weakness for the traditional Kindle e-ink devices, but it's completely inexcusable on Kindle Fire and in Kindle apps on full-blown tablets.

I definitely think Bluefire Reader needs at least the 5 highlight colours offered by Marvin if it wishes to remain competitive.

[kyteflyer]

Originally Posted by Micah

2. We have a sort by author option already - not sure I understand the comment?

This is not particularly useful if you are having many books by multiple authors. Imagine, if you will, 25 books by Orson Scott Card, the complete works of Shakespeare as separate volumes, all of Agatha Christie... and the MASSIVE list which ensues.

Stanza creates a page for each author. So sorting by Author gives an author list, with the number of books for each one, and the listing is on a linked page.

Shubook also does that, and goes even further (and Bluefire could benefit from both these ideas) and allows user labels... so you can sort your books pretty much as you like... again, it all happens on separate linked pages. Shubook also takes a leaf from the Stanza standards and provides a touchable #-Z down the right side of the listings, whether by Title, Author or Label.