Bluefire reader app

[luvshihtzu]

Cockeye,

Here is the ebook page for the Philadelphia Free Library. As of a few minutes ago they currently have 4,124 eBooks and almost double that in audiobooks. My local library only has approximately 1,300 eBooks right now.

Here is the link. http://freelibrary.lib.overdrive.com...rchID=47128568.

You may have to put a hold on some books, but they get returned pretty quickly. Lots to read there. Good luck.

[mallard13]

I just tried to use the //nav/transfer technique again after successfully transferring a library book last year, but, when I try to access http:192.168.2.197:8080 with my 1st Gen iPod Touch tethered to my PC, Safari responds with a 'Cannot Open Page' error "because it could not connect to the server." Does any one have any ideas as to what I have done wrong or what has changed? That was the only way I could find that would work on my 1st Gen Touch.

[toddos]

Originally Posted by mallard13

I just tried to use the //nav/transfer technique again after successfully transferring a library book last year, but, when I try to access http:192.168.2.197:8080 with my 1st Gen iPod Touch tethered to my PC, Safari responds with a 'Cannot Open Page' error "because it could not connect to the server." Does any one have any ideas as to what I have done wrong or what has changed? That was the only way I could find that would work on my 1st Gen Touch.

Did you forget some //s in there? "http://192.168.2.197:8080". If you left out the ""//" after "http:", I believe most browsers will attempt to append "http://" to that so you were really looking for the completely incorrect address of "http://http:192.168.2.197:8080"

[mallard13]

Originally Posted by toddos

Did you forget some //s in there? "http://192.168.2.197:8080". If you left out the ""//" after "http:", I believe most browsers will attempt to append "http://" to that so you were really looking for the completely incorrect address of "http://http:192.168.2.197:8080"

Yes, I did forget the "//" after "http:" , but adding them in still gave the same error from Safari.

[ATimson]

Originally Posted by mallard13

Does any one have any ideas as to what I have done wrong or what has changed?

Is your desktop's IP address still 192.168.2.197, or has it changed?

[km45]

Originally Posted by Micah

I want to take a moment here to urge everyone to BACK UP your eBooks in a convenient place. It is easy. Tether to iTunes, then use the file sharing feature to copy all the books in your Bluefire Reader library to a folder on your computer.

So the iPad doesn't backup what's on it when you normally sync? I assumed it did

Ken

[ATimson]

Originally Posted by km45

So the iPad doesn't backup what's on it when you normally sync? I assumed it did

It does, but you have to restore the entire iPad; you can't restore just part of the backup.

[mallard13]

Originally Posted by ATimson

Is your desktop's IP address still 192.168.2.197, or has it changed?

The PC's (laptop) IP address has changed to 192.168.2.168
I was following the bluefirereader://nav/transfer instructions, which gave the 192.168.2.197 IP address. Nevertheless, changing to the PC's current IP address still didn't work, although Safari started 'loading' & eventually 'errored' with a "server stopped responding" message.

[toddos]

Is the device still awake when you try to do this? If the device sleeps and/or you lock the screen, the server will shut off and you can't connect. Also, make sure your browser isn't set to auto-provide credentials to the web page. Bluefire randomly generates username/password each time you start the server, so if you had connected previously and told Safari to save and use the previous username/password, it could be failing because authorization is bad. But that should show an authorization failure page and not "server stopped responding".

[dgraygrayco]

Originally Posted by Micah

When we "set" margins, we don't actually futz with the publisher's CSS, we just "inset" the whole page. The "smallest" margins are only a few pixels inset. So it is likey the formatting of the books. We might need to be a bit more "aggressive" when a user turns off "Use Publisher Formatting" which currently would maybe be better labled "Over-write specific, standard CSS selectors and hope the publisher did not get fancy with CSS selector names"

As a book publisher who has done a lot of research into ePub formatting, I know that there are a lot of poorly formatted ePubs out there--including many from the Big Five publishers (who are rushing to get their backlist into ebook format). Ebook formatting is often in the hands of traditional-book designers, who don't fully understand HTML and CSS.

I read ebooks on multiple devices and platforms. One thing I've found is that the more settings I'm able to override, the better my reading experience is. No publisher can guess what type size will be comfortable for me on my iPhone, for example, and should not try to specify one. Same with margins. I'm currently trying to read a HarperCollins ebook using Bluefire on an iPhone, and at a small type size and "no" margin, I'm still getting wide margins--and only averaging 4 words per line, which is too few for sustained reading.

[mallard13]

Originally Posted by toddos

Is the device still awake when you try to do this? If the device sleeps and/or you lock the screen, the server will shut off and you can't connect. Also, make sure your browser isn't set to auto-provide credentials to the web page. Bluefire randomly generates username/password each time you start the server, so if you had connected previously and told Safari to save and use the previous username/password, it could be failing because authorization is bad. But that should show an authorization failure page and not "server stopped responding".

Dooohh.... I just figured out that I was opening Safari on the iPod, instead of Firefox on my Laptop. Your words about saving username/password triggered the 'aha' &
Transfer completed successfully.
Now to add a note to self with a little more detail on the procedure. Thanks to all who responded.

[Micah]

FYI, I've been slammed lately, but will try to catch up on the posts in this thread tomorrow.

[Shieko]

Hi! I adore this software, but there are a few things I've noticed that are preventing me from swapping to BFR as my full time reader.

I love stanza's tap - chapter page number. I find it more useful knowing what page I'm up to in the chapter than what page I'm up to in the book. It helps me pace my reading better around other tasks as I hate putting a book down mid-chapter, as far as I've seen there is no way for me to quickly check chapter length instead of position in the whole book.

Forcing a different font type. I've noticed that in some of my books I cannot override the type of font used in an ebook regardless of 'use publisher's formatting' setting. I find it less enjoyable reading serif-text so not being able to change some books to sanserif is a minor but present drawback.

I love that the night time mode inverts image colour, something I've found other readers lacking. This is a highlight, as trivial as that may seem for some people, but I like having the little chapter break images appear appropriately instead of seeing a white box/image in the middle of my black pages. It helps me enjoy the overall reading experience. A+

Look forward to using the software more and more.

[orwell2k]

I'm sure this has been mentioned here, but I don't really want to browse 28 pages of thread, so I'll just say it again.

This reader has one very fine option that no other reader seems to offer (at least as far as I know) - it has a setting which enables users to switch on/off the publisher embedded formatting in ePubs. This would seem to be the perfect kind of option for an ePub reader, (finally) making use of the inherent features of the ePub format.

As an example, compare the very fine version of Jerome K. Jerome's Three Men in a boat available on this site. It is a superb piece of ePub creation, but very often the crappy ADE display settings force the book to display poorly. Bluefire allows you to fully tailor the way a book is displayed (good for when the publishers screw up or make bad choices - very common) or to select the publisher's formatting (for when they get it right, like this version of Three Men in a boat).

Attached are two photos comparing Bluefire display of this eBook versus Stanza display. Notice how Bluefire display the Fontin font embedded in the Jerome K. Jerome ePub book.

In addition, for PDF eBooks Bluefire seems to do a far better job of rendering than other iPad apps, especially with troublesome PDFs. I had a text book that had some poorly formatted diagrams that basically didn't display properly in any reader other than Bluefire (GoodReader, iBooks, Bookman, etc.). Also I find the zooming and page manipulation much nicer for PDFs than in any other apps.

Just thought I'd share these bits of info for those considering this app - it's worth a look.

[ChristopherTD]

Originally Posted by dgraygrayco

I read ebooks on multiple devices and platforms. One thing I've found is that the more settings I'm able to override, the better my reading experience is. No publisher can guess what type size will be comfortable for me on my iPhone, for example, and should not try to specify one. Same with margins. I'm currently trying to read a HarperCollins ebook using Bluefire on an iPhone, and at a small type size and "no" margin, I'm still getting wide margins--and only averaging 4 words per line, which is too few for sustained reading.

Harper Collins seem to be repeat offenders in rushing poorly OCR'd text into a mediocre ePub wrapper. Many OCR artifcats and offensive formatting. I avoid them now.

Gollancz (Orion) seem to be on the ball, their ebooks even have front matter that refers to the ebook, not the print version!