Hi All,
Here's an alternative, promising eBook reader for books in ePub format
without DRM: Ibis Reader. It works with VoiceOver on the iPhone, iPod
Touch, and iPad, and allows bookmarking but has some odd features in
terms of navigation. You can read DRM-free ePub books either on your
computer or mobile device, and keep them in sync. I'll excerpt the
description from Wired's Gadget Lab article by Charlie Sorrel, "Ibis
Reader for iPhone: A Web App That Thinks It's a Native App":
<http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2010/02/ibis-reader-for-iphone-a-web-app-that-thinks-its-a-native-app/
>
<begin excerpt>
Ibis reader is an e-book reading application that does everything that
you’d expect an iPhone e-reader to do, with one big difference: It
doesn’t come from the App Store. The app runs on any iPhone or iPod
Touch and offers full offline access to your library of books, and is
as fast and responsive as a native iPhone application. It manages this
through the magic of HTML5, which is supported by Mobile Safari and -
crucially - offers offline storage for web-sites.
To install Ibis you navigate to the page in Safari. You will be asked
if you will grant the site 50MB of storage space. After agreeing, you
hit the “+” button and add the app to the home-screen. Now, when
you hit that button, you are launched directly into Ibis, not just a
tab in Safari, and because it stores both itself and your downloaded
books locally, it’ll even work with an iPod Touch out of Wi-Fi range.
The controls are similar to Stanza or Kindle for iPhone: tap either
side of the screen to flip pages and touch the center to access more
settings. You can browse for public domain books from Feedbooks from
within the app, and even add books from the URL of your choice.
Anything downloaded is stored for you in a local library, and if you
opt to sign up for an Ibis account, you can read, fully synced, across
multiple platforms.
Like Stanza and Apple’s upcoming iPad app, iBooks, Ibis uses the ePub
standard format, and you can even upload these files to your account
from your desktop web browser, from where they will automatically
appear on your mobile device. And because Android uses Webkit for its
browser, it too can install and use the app offline.
I have been playing around with Ibis for a little while and it really
does behave like a local application, although sometimes it is not
quite as fast when flipping between different sections. In fact,
there’s only one thing that really gives it away: scrolling is a lot
slower. Whereas in a native app you can “throw” a page and it
speedily scrolls up or down, the “elastic” holding the pages of web
apps is a lot stronger. It’s not just Ibis. This is a problem with
all non-native applications on the iPhone.
As a full-featured e-reader, Ibis is surprisingly good. As a proof-of-
concept for non-approved, non-App Store applications, it is straight-
up amazing.
<end excerpt>
Additional Information and Some VoiceOver-Specific comments:
1. The web site to visit is:
<ibisreader.com>
If you visit this site from an iPhone or iPod Touch, the link to
install comes up immediately. On an iPad, there will be a link to a
version that is optimized for the iPad. In both cases, the "+" button
is what VoiceOver reads out as the "Utilities" button in Safari. This
is at the bottom center of the screen on the iPhone, and along the top
menu bar on the iPad. The iPad-specific installation is a bit
confusing because there is a graphic that is an arrow pointing to the
button (that you won't be able to use), as well as the fact that
VoiceOver announces the button as "Utilities" instead of "+". Just
ignore this part of the instructions, find the "Utilities" button, and
double tap the "Add to Home Screen" button. I actually found it
easier to navigate the iPhone/iPod Touch version of the app, since the
links and buttons are laid out out to be close to each other.
2. When you reach the account page you can create your account by
simply typing in an email address and password into the text fields.
There are buttons just above the virtual keyboard for "previous",
"next", "autofill", and "done" that you can use to move focus to the
next text field (e.g., type in your email address, then double tap the
"next" button above the virtual keyboard to move to the password
field, and either double tap the "done" button to dismiss the keyboard
and access the page to double tap the "OK" button, or double tap the
"Go" button at the bottom right of the keyboard). Alternatively, you
can just double tap the text field for password and input -- the
"next", "previous", and "done" buttons are easier to use on the iPad
to move focus to fields. Using the "Go" button saves you having to
double tap the "OK" button on the field -- login is immediate.
3. The top buttons on the home page are "My Books", "Get Books", and
"Sign In/Out". At present "Get Books" points to various feedbooks
links. There's also an "Add book (download from URL)" button that I
haven't successfully used yet. However, some eBook publishers, like
O'Reilly, have links on their pages that allow you to download your
eBook into an Ibis Reader account. If you access the "O'Reilly
Ebooks" link in the Stanza app under "Bookstores", and go to "My
oreilly.com Bookshelf", and select your book, if ePub is one of the
available formats, there will be both a "Download to Stanza" link and
a "Read in Ibis Reader" link at the bottom of the page. Double
tapping the "Read in Ibis Reader" link will download the book to your
Ibis Reader account in the "Cloud".
4. The process of actually downloading the book into your local reader
(i.e., when you double tap the "Ibis Reader" app on your screen,
double tap "My Books", double tap the "My Online Bookshelf" link, then
double tap one of the listed books listed and double tap "My Books"
again) seems to take a while under wireless transfer (a couple of
minutes), and there aren't progress indicators.
5. The easy way to access the book is through the "Book Info" link,
which takes you to a page that gives a brief description of the book,
then lists the table of contents links. (This way you don't have to
start reading at a graphic cover that is unresponsive.) There are
also controls to let you delete the book if you swipe to the bottom of
the page.
6. You can use a two finger flick down to start reading. Similarly,
you can use a two-finger tap to stop reading, and a two-finger tap to
resume reading from that point again. If you need to bring up the
controls to navigate back to the table of contents, double tap the
center of the screen. You'll get a summary of your location in the
book, with the title and page number, e.g "The Geek Atlas Page 2 of 5
into "49. Greenwich, London, England" 37% into the book." The top
buttons should also appear: "Home", "Book Info", and "Settings".
You'll also hear the links for "Bookmark" at the upper right, just
below "Settings", "Previous" at the center left edge, and "Next" at
the center right edge. If you have difficulty bringing up this
screen, toggle VoiceOver off, touch the center of the screen, and
toggle it on again.
7. What's weird: when you do your two finger flick down, VoiceOver
will keep reading through the chapter, but the first page won't
update. I can get the page to advance by double tapping the center of
the screen to bring up the menu with "Previous" and "Next" at the left
and right. If I double tap and hold on the "Next" button or the
"Previous" button so that you hear the burbly noise for the pass
through gesture, or simply double tap hard on the button, I can then
double tap any where on the screen and get the previous or next page,
and each double tap advances or reverses the page by one step.
However, as soon as I touch a section of the screen to read the text
(and verify that I've moved ahead or back however many pages I've
tapped), the focus is removed from the previous or next button. Also,
if you do a two finger flick down, you'll continue to read from the
present page onward, but if you do a two finger flick up, your reading
will start at the beginning of the chapter.
8. To bookmark a page, toggle VoiceOver off and touch the upper right
corner of the page, then toggle VoiceOver on again. To remove a
bookmark from a page, toggle VoiceOver off and touch the upper right
corner, then toggle VoiceOver on again. Bookmarks are stored as links
on the "Book Info" page, just after the Table of Contents link entries
and above the "Continue Reading" link that lets you resume where you
left off, and above the "Delete" option. Just swipe to get down to it.
Final thoughts. Ibis Reader only works for DRM-free eBooks, but there
are an increasing number of sites that provide books in this format.
You can also use tools such as Stanza Desktop and Calibre to convert
other DRM-free book formats into ePub (with different degrees of
success). The main present advantage of Ibis Reader over using iBooks
is that it's possible to easily upload from other sources instead of
adding files to the iTunes library and syncing through USB. However,
this is still less flexible than Stanza -- which is perfectly
accessible in its catalog and upload sources, just not entirely
accessible in terms of the actually reader navigation as of yet. This
will probably get better, and there are entries in the designer's blog
about easy ways for publishers to formulate links to easily download
the book to Ibis Reader. You can also access the books through a web
browser, but the nice feature is that once downloaded onto your iPhone
or iPod Touch, you can read the book without requiring an internet
connection. It's also superior to O'Reilly's Bookworm in allowing you
to set bookmarks, as well as not requiring that active internet
connection to read on your iPhone or iPod Touch. On an iPad, using
iBooks to read and navigate is still the superior reading experience
with VoiceOver. Incidentally, I don't understand who recommend Stanza
as an accessible solution for the iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch are
managing to navigate and read continuously -- i.e. without
continuously having to touch the screen to read out each section.
Stanza Desktop on a Mac is accessible, but doesn't provide a solution
for people with mobile devices. It also doesn't bookmark eBooks.
There are other solutions for PDFs, but not so many accessible
solutions for the mobile eBook readers.
HTH
Cheers,
Esther
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