Display images full-screen?

[jttraverse]

After some amount of hacking at this I'm looking for some help on how to display an image on a device (iPad, smartphones, etc.) in full-screen mode. Specifically, I'd like to link to a picture from in an ePub format book, and have the picture opened up by the device or reader and displayed as it would any normal image. The point is to not have the ePub reader app treat the picture as an embedded image and in so doing lock the image size so it cannot be zoomed.

Fwiw, on my HTC EVO, images can be viewed with either the built-in image viewer capability or the "ES Image Browser". The ES app opens the image but you cannot then zoom in on the image. If I look at the same picture using the built-in "View image" option then I can zoom in on the image perfectly. I've been told that on the iPad it is possible to zoom on images embedded in ePub docs, though I don't have an iPad to try it. So it may be something that has to do with the eReader app being used.

My goal is simply to have illustrations in my book open in a way that lets the reader pinch-to-zoom or double-tap and zoom in on them. I've seen an ePub magazine with a special .xml file that seems to do this, but how to click a link in an ePub book that opens an image full-screen zoomable is making me crazy.
..Anyone know how to do this?
Thanks,
JTT

[jharker]

Hi, JTT!

Yes, as we discussed in another thread, this is 100% dependent on the viewer application you use. Images are zoomable in iBooks, but not in the ES Image Browser on the EVO. Nook and ADE handle it differently, as well.

In short, there is no single "magic" solution to guarantee that your images will be full-page viewable or zoomable on a particular platform. Some platforms don't support this functionality at all.

You need to identify which platform/software you're really interested in, and figure out what features it supports. Or, try to make a single ePub file that is generally compatible with multiple platforms (difficult!), and accept that in some cases it won't work.

Is this for your own personal use? Or are you trying to create ebooks for sale?

[jttraverse]

This is for a book I've written that contains illustrations that I want 'zoomable' to better see the details in them.

The ReplicaMap file I talked about in my other posts seems to be just plain vanilla XML but does enable display of images full screen/zoomable (on the NookColor). So I can't yet understand why, even copying the exact coding and saving it as some other file name, it cannot be called from a link in an ePub book and still work. Maybe it's something unique to digital magazines..

Anyway, my intent is to have the images viewable on any of the currently popular color readers that have pinch-to-zoom...or some type of zoom function..and that can read ePub format (i.e. iPad, NookColor, Galaxy Tab, or any number of similar smartphones.)
I'm amazed this is so difficult since I have to believe it's something that would be extremely useful to authors, and it seems like such a no-brainer to do.
-JTT

[Jellby]

Originally Posted by jttraverse

Anyway, my intent is to have the images viewable on any of the currently popular color readers that have pinch-to-zoom...or some type of zoom function..and that can read ePub format (i.e. iPad, NookColor, Galaxy Tab, or any number of similar smartphones.)
I'm amazed this is so difficult since I have to believe it's something that would be extremely useful to authors, and it seems like such a no-brainer to do.
-JTT

Write to those responsible for the readers asking them to add the features. Really, it's something that should be available from the reader application, I wrote Bookeen some time ago asking for this too.

As an analogy, you are trying the equivalent of coding a "save image as" in a browser with javascript (or ECMAscript, or whatever script flavour present), when it is obviously a feature that should be available from the browser for any image (through a right-click, for instance).