Trouble with zipped files

[hokiemule]

I got my mother a nook Simple Touch for her birthday in late October. She has tried to download a free ebook from a site she frequents - they offer Kindle-friendly and nook/Sony-friendly versions. When she downloads the nook version on her computer or her netbook, it is downloading a zipped file. If the zipped file is dragged and dropped into the My Folders/Books folder, the nook doesn't recognize it and show it in the library. Here are the facts so far:

1) downloads fine from B&N or smashwords,with no problems, so it's not the nook itself;
2) when I try to open the zipped file and extract the files on either her computer or netbook, it says the file is empty;
3) when I downloaded the FY-Zip unzip program to see if that made a difference, the file unzips and shows ePUb versions but it remains a folder and doesn't show in the library on her nook and won't open as a book;
4) when I download it on my computer (HP with Windows 7), it downloads as an epub, loads to the nook and shows up on the library just fine. Her computers are an HP with Windows 7 and an Acer netbook with XP.

Ideas and suggestions are much appreciated.

[geertm]

Originally Posted by hokiemule

I got my mother a nook Simple Touch for her birthday in late October. She has tried to download a free ebook from a site she frequents - they offer Kindle-friendly and nook/Sony-friendly versions. When she downloads the nook version on her computer or her netbook, it is downloading a zipped file. If the zipped file is dragged and dropped into the My Folders/Books folder, the nook doesn't recognize it and show it in the library. Here are the facts so far:

1) downloads fine from B&N or smashwords,with no problems, so it's not the nook itself;
2) when I try to open the zipped file and extract the files on either her computer or netbook, it says the file is empty;
3) when I downloaded the FY-Zip unzip program to see if that made a difference, the file unzips and shows ePUb versions but it remains a folder and doesn't show in the library on her nook and won't open as a book;
4) when I download it on my computer (HP with Windows 7), it downloads as an epub, loads to the nook and shows up on the library just fine. Her computers are an HP with Windows 7 and an Acer netbook with XP.

Ideas and suggestions are much appreciated.

An ePub file is technically just a Zip file. Sometimes for some reason (from what I have read this is caused by incorrect website code) Windows will change the ".epub" extension to ".zip". This happened to me at Fictionwise.
Just rename the ".zip" extension to ".epub", and you can read the books. The file itself is fine, it is just the name that gets changed when downloaded.

[taustin]

It's probably the web site not explicitly telling the browser what type of file it is, and the browser/Windows trying to deduce it based on the file format, and failing. (It is, after all, ultimately, a zip file.) I suspect that if you compre the two computers, you'll find they have different versions of web browsers (or completely different browsers), and that yours is newer/smarter/more up to date.

[hokiemule]

Originally Posted by geertm

An ePub file is technically just a Zip file. Sometimes for some reason (from what I have read this is caused by incorrect website code) Windows will change the ".epub" extension to ".zip". This happened to me at Fictionwise.
Just rename the ".zip" extension to ".epub", and you can read the books. The file itself is fine, it is just the name that gets changed when downloaded.

I just tried that, but it doesn't work. When the file is downloaded, it doesn't offer me an option to do anything but save it as a zipped file. The guts of the file have no recognizable extension to change. Are you talking about changing the extensions somewhere else? When I unzip the folder, the extensions all say epub, but the nook still doesn't recognize it.

[hokiemule]

Problem solved - based on the posts you made, it occurred to me that the difference between my computer and her HP is that I was using Firefox and she was using IE.

I installed Firefox on her computer and all is good - it now downloads with the appropriate epub extension.

IE sucks. That is all.

Thanks so much for the quick replies and help!

[geertm]

Originally Posted by hokiemule

I just tried that, but it doesn't work. When the file is downloaded, it doesn't offer me an option to do anything but save it as a zipped file. The guts of the file have no recognizable extension to change. Are you talking about changing the extensions somewhere else? When I unzip the folder, the extensions all say epub, but the nook still doesn't recognize it.

The file you download will be named name.zip. Just change this to name.epub.