Freda Ebook Reader for Windows and Android

[jpijper]

Originally Posted by als1

Hello, I just posted a question about Freda's behavior in Windows Phone 7 here.

Thanks, but I think that thread is for Windows Mobile only - not sure though.

[Jim Chapman]

Hi - Freda-related posts here, or on the XDA forum (link in previous post) will get attention. I do note there hasn't been much activity recently (and have been away on vacation, which is why I did not answer sooner).

[starrigger]

Hi Jim -- Is the new release of Freda just for phones, or will it work on Win Mobile 6 on a PDA, too? (Glad to see you're still working on it. I still use it pretty much on a daily basis on my Dell PDA.)

Jeff

[Jim Chapman]

Originally Posted by starrigger

Hi Jim -- Is the new release of Freda just for phones, or will it work on Win Mobile 6 on a PDA, too?

It is only for Windows Phone 7. The version for Win Mobile 6 (etc.) is a separate build (though I am still working on it, as time permits).

[starrigger]

Got it. Thanks.

[jpijper]

Originally Posted by Jim Chapman

The new version (2.0) of Freda is now available on the marketplace.

I've added a bunch of fixes and small changes, but the main one is getting rid of the 'pivot' control for the main page. Now you just have bunch of stacked panels, one above the other - each panel can be 'expanded' by tapping on its '+' button, or 'collapsed' by tapping again on that button. The panels also have (at their right hand end) a 'maximise' button to let you switch to a full screen view.

Jim

Hi Jim,

I want to thank you very much for the Freda reader. I use it every day on my Windows Phone 7 and before that on my WM 6.1 phone, and I am very happy with it. So please keep that in mind when reading the following.

I regret the fact that in your latest Windows Phone 7 version you decided to get rid of the pivot control for the main page and replace it with the panel approach. I appreciated that you adopted the Metro style of doing things, it made Freda feel a part of the Windows Phone 7 interface, much more than it does now, when it looks and feels a bit awkward to me.

Also, I find the current interface less intuitive, not to mention uglier. And when I expand a DropBox folder, for instance, the contents are rendered so small as to become kind of more difficult to tap correctly.

As far as I am concerned, your decision to adopt the panel approach is a big step backwards from a UI point of view. Is it possible that you might change your mind about this?

Once again, I am a happy and frequent Freda user, so please do not take this criticism the wrong way.

Thanks,
Jan Roelof

[Jim Chapman]

Originally Posted by jpijper

As far as I am concerned, your decision to adopt the panel approach is a big step backwards from a UI point of view. Is it possible that you might change your mind about this?

Thankyou for your comments Jan, I am always glad to receive feedback - especially when it expressed so courteously :-)

As for Freda's design for dealing with multiple book sources, I do understand where you are coming from. My decision to switch away from the 'pivot' control was motivated by a few considerations:
1) The 'pivot' control is, I think, really meant for summary-detail, or data-filter relationships. I didn't see many other apps using it just as a way to list a series of different entities horizontally.
2) With the pivot setup, there is no obvious way to manage the list of book sources (so you end up needing a special page to 'manage the list of sources' - which is very inconsistent with metro's data-manipulation patterns).
3) The programming environment does not give you a good way to hide pivot-page tabs or switch them around.
4) Once you have more than 4 tabs on a pivot control, performance becomes flaky.
5) For some book sources you want to be able pan horizontally (viewing the whole of a long title, or panning around a web view). That interacts in a confusing way with the pivot control's horizontal scrolling gesture.

I am not actually very happy with the current setup either, and I will be making more changes to it. And since my main reason for switching is (4), I will be looking at performance on the new Mango OS version, since it may be that the performance issues have been fixed in that version. I may look at a layout based on a Panorama control, where the user gets to arrange their book sources any way they wish (horizontally, vertically, or a mixture).

Thanks again for the feedback,

And by the way, if you are interested in testing beta versions of the software, do let me know (email your Windows Live ID to me at jim@turnipsoft.co.uk).

Jim

[jpijper]

Originally Posted by Jim Chapman

And by the way, if you are interested in testing beta versions of the software, do let me know (email your Windows Live ID to me at jim@turnipsoft.co.uk).

Jim

I would like to, but I can't sideload apps.

Jan Roelof

[Jim Chapman]

Originally Posted by jpijper

I would like to, but I can't sideload apps.

As it turns out, Microsoft intend to make a 'beta test' facility available for any users, whether or not they have dev-unlocked phones. That's going to be rolled out as part of the 'mango' (i.e. Windows Phone 7.5) update, which should be getting deployed to all Windows Phone over the next few weeks/months.

Once you've got that update, you can enroll in Freda's beta-testing programme by emailing me your Windows Live ID, and I then get Microsoft to email you a special link that will let you download the beta version of the app.

Cheers,

Jim

[jpijper]

Originally Posted by Jim Chapman

As it turns out, Microsoft intend to make a 'beta test' facility available for any users, whether or not they have dev-unlocked phones. That's going to be rolled out as part of the 'mango' (i.e. Windows Phone 7.5) update, which should be getting deployed to all Windows Phone over the next few weeks/months.

Once you've got that update, you can enroll in Freda's beta-testing programme by emailing me your Windows Live ID, and I then get Microsoft to email you a special link that will let you download the beta version of the app.

Cheers,

Jim

Great, I'll keep this in mind. I hope I'll be able to install the Mango update. I'm currently on the Beta 2, but something went wrong when I installed that, so I'm not at all certain I'll be able to roll back to NoDo, which is a prerequisite for Mango.

Jan Roelof

[ForstRose]

I just installed WP7.5 on my LG quantum and the Freda update but now all my ebooks won't load anymore. The files seem to be there but I can't access them so not sure what is going on. I hope it is just a temporary issue and that I can get back into them as I am a reviewer and have several ebook reviews due this next two weeks and the phone reads much nicer than the computer screen besides being alot more portable than my laptop. If you have any ideas about why freda 2.0, calibre 0.8.21, and wp 7.5 updates would have created the issue of my book files seeming to still be on the phone but not opening please let me know asap what steps to try in order to remedy this. Thanks in advance.

[ForstRose]

I solved my own problem. For some reason I had to reload the files to my phone to be able to open them on the phone in freda after updating the software.

[Jim Chapman]

Originally Posted by ForstRose

I solved my own problem. For some reason I had to reload the files to my phone to be able to open them on the phone in freda after updating the software.

OK, thankyou for the update. I am not sure why this happened - Freda ought to handle an update more tidily than that. Would you be able to send me your log file, so I can check what happened? (on the 'support' screen, tap the 'email for support' button).

Thanks for using Freda,

Jim

[toddos]

I just noticed an issue with OPDS today. To set up:

• Run Calibre's OPDS server
• Add a book to the library
• Download the book to Freda
• Convert epub to epub in calibre (not sure if this step is important, but it does add an "original_epub" file to the library item, but that's not exposed through the OPDS).
• Open the epub file in Sigil, edit, and save
• Delete book from Freda
• Attempt to re-download book from OPDS

I'd expect to get a copy of the updated book. Instead, I get what appears to be a cached copy of the original unedited book. Using a PC I can download the updated book from Calibre's web server, both by going through the HTML pages and by manually walking through the OPDS XML output. I can add Calibre's HTML web page to Freda and download the book that way, and I get the correctly updated book. But no matter what I do, I can't get the updated book through OPDS. I can restart the calibre server and still get the old copy of the book. Even after restarting the phone I still get the old copy of the book.

The only thing that did work was going to the Support tab and deleting temporary files (I wouldn't expect to have to do this manually). Of course doing that deleted the temporary files for all of my books, which isn't catastrophic but it does mean it'll take much longer after opening each book to recalculate page counts and such.

I'm using Freda-unfree, version 2.0, using an HTC HD7S running 7390 NoDo (because AT&T hates this phone and won't update it to Mango yet. Grrr). Although deleting temp files "works", this does seem like a bug to me as I would expect downloading from an OPDS would get the latest version of what's on the server and not some locally cached copy.

[Jim Chapman]

Originally Posted by toddos

I just noticed an issue with OPDS today.

Fair point. I will take a look at it.

Thanks,

Jim