Free ePub books from fictionwise come up as zip file?

[superstitious]

Hi,

Im a newbie in the file formatting and all. I found a couple of free books at fictionwise in the multi-format. I then chose to download them in ePub. They both downloaded as compressed zip files. How do I make these read on the ADE software? Do I need to extract them somehow? Thx.

[AnemicOak]

Changing the .zip extension to .epub should do it.

[krischik]

Originally Posted by superstitious

Im a newbie in the file formatting and all. I found a couple of free books at fictionwise in the multi-format. I then chose to download them in ePub. They both downloaded as compressed zip files. How do I make these read on the ADE software? Do I need to extract them somehow? Thx.

Probably either the browser or the web-server thought it knows better and changed the extension.

There are quite a few so called container formats which are based on zip. What happens is that the browser / web-server checks the first 256 bytes of the file, notices that the content look a just like a zip file and then arbitrarily changes the extension from ebup, utz, jar, whatever to zip.

I say browser / web-server because it only happens in specific combinations (Best guess: Unix web-server using /etc/magic and Internet Explorer just being a smart arse). Use a different browser and the problem might go away.

[superstitious]

I just changed the file extension from .zip to .epub and yea it works! Thanks so much. Wow that was easier than I thought.

[frabjous]

I noticed IE on Windows 7 was doing this when downloading from an Apache/Red Hat server. I'm fairly sure this is IE's fault. Another reason to disike Microsoft.

[Elsi]

I would venture a guess that the server did not include a proper mime-type header on the http transmission of the file. That leaves it to the browser/agent to determine the file type. Some simply use the file suffix and trust the "well-known" names to indicate the file type. Others will inspect the file's contents and make a decision from that. Some are arrogant & will override the mime-type header even when it is present.

[krischik]

Originally Posted by Elsi

I would venture a guess that the server did not include a proper mime-type header on the http transmission of the file. That leaves it to the browser/agent to determine the file type. Some simply use the file suffix and trust the "well-known" names to indicate the file type. Others will inspect the file's contents and make a decision from that. Some are arrogant & will override the mime-type header even when it is present.

Actually I think it's more complicated:

First and foremost the webside developer forgot the provide the mime-type. On modern system they can - for example - be attached to the extended attributes and Apache can be told to read the EA's to determine the correct type.

Without the type being provided in the EA'a Apache starts guesswork. First he extension ebub comes up which nothing then Apache would try /etc/mime-magic which comes up with "application/zip" - which is send to the bowser.

Now IE - being a smart arse (like most Microsoft products) and always trying to protect us from problems (which we would not have without Microsoft) renames the file.

Martin

[Sydney's Mom]

Originally Posted by frabjous

I noticed IE on Windows 7 was doing this when downloading from an Apache/Red Hat server. I'm fairly sure this is IE's fault. Another reason to disike Microsoft.

Please, no! I hate, hate, hate Vista, and have given up doing several things, hoping I can do them in Windows 7. Hopefully it is only IE, and Windows 7 doesn't have the security issues Vista does.

[JSWolf]

One thing to do in Vista and Windows 7 is to install Firefox and give up on IE.