[HN Gopher] Show HN: A usable eBook reader inside a browser (azw... ___________________________________________________________________ Show HN: A usable eBook reader inside a browser (azw3, mobi, ePub, pdf) Author : javapnews Score : 91 points Date : 2021-01-28 20:38 UTC (2 hours ago) (HTM) web link (www.loudreader.com) (TXT) w3m dump (www.loudreader.com) | keyle wrote: | The open file button doesn't do anything on Safari? | Brendinooo wrote: | Is this using https://github.com/futurepress/epub.js/ under the | hood? | casmith wrote: | Very cool project! Is it open sourced? | Phrodo_00 wrote: | Would be cool if it was MPL, BSD, or MIT Licensed. Could | eventually be embedded into browsers. | anderspitman wrote: | Excellent. Just a couple nitpicks (on Linux Chromium): | | * Hovering over either button on the top right opens a menu. I'm | pretty sure only the far right is supposed to. | | * Needs an option to center the content for wide screens. | | Have you considered adding support for loading files from the | user's Google Drive/Dropbox/etc? It seems like many apps would | benefit from this. I've been toying with the idea of writing a JS | lib to provide a common interface to all the big ones, kind of | like how rclone does for the command line but for frontend apps. | javapnews wrote: | Try to read ebooks via browser and couldn't find one that really | works that able to replace desktop readers. | | Made one that usable for daily use. Comments and suggestion | welcome. | mrec wrote: | Solid start. The page layout options could use a bit more work: | | 1. It initially defaults to showing two facing pages per | screen, but the selector shows "Read a chapter as a long | scrolled page" as selected. "Fit 2 page side by side in window" | is the same and is presumably the actual default. Switching | back to "long scrolled page" from that does do what you'd | expect. This is fullscreen on a 1920x1080 desktop display. | | 2. I personally dislike side-by-side views - I find them | distracting - but at this size the line length for "long | scrolled page" is too long for readability. I'd prefer a "long | scrolled page but with shorter lines and bigger margins" | option, like Firefox's reader view. | SamBam wrote: | Can you describe what motivated you to build an ebook reader | for the browser, when multiple free desktop and mobile book | readers exist? | | Also, do I need to keep the screen open if I want to save my | place in my book? It doesn't seem to save my book or my | location when I reload the page. | xtracto wrote: | hey, I actually was working on something similar ( forking from | https://github.com/satorumurmur/bibi which is an open source | epub reader ), but my objective was to allow | | a) To save books in some place online like s3 or gdrive etc. | | b) Allowing to use the "bookmark" feature across sessions. | | My use case is that sometimes I am reading a EPUB and I have it | in my tablet, but sometimes I have my computer, and othertimes | I have my phone. Currently I have to download it 3 times to | read it and remember the bookmark. | alfonsodev wrote: | Amazing! Great job! I'm so curious about your process | | What programming language did you use? | | What was the harder part? | | Which format was the hardest? | | How long did it take you? | foxfired wrote: | Thanks for building this. I'm trying to make my book available in | all these formats but my biggest issue is that it is hard to read | a book on both desktop or mobile. | | Does anybody knows of any interesting UI that works for books? | I've looked into interactive books but it's only fun for few | pages and then it leans more toward annoying. Any suggestions? | ORioN63 wrote: | Any way to get this to be the default pwa/app for opening said | filetypes in Android? | mmastrac wrote: | Awesome project. I'm not sure if it's just in Firefox, but I | would recommend that you be a little more aggressive with the | whitespace in the books. | | I've found that iBooks has a great display stylesheet for epub | and what makes it great is the ratio of text size to whitespace. | It also limits how wide text can get - no need to spread it | across the whole page. You could probably double the size of your | margins to improve this. | | I am also not sure if Firefox is causing this, but inter-line | distances do not seem to be consistent and that is very | distracting as a reader. | | In both browsers the next/prev page arrows are also weirdly off- | center. | boffinism wrote: | Not usable on mobile | imedadel wrote: | This is really good! I couldn't find a good lightweight ePub | reader. Is it open source though? I'd love to customize it a bit | :) | mrec wrote: | What platform are you on? SumatraPDF handles most ebook formats | and is nice and zippy. | imedadel wrote: | Ubuntu/Linux Mint. I like to customize the typography, the | colors, the text width. SumatraPDF doesn't seem to be | available on Ubuntu though. | dublinben wrote: | Foliate is a wonderful FOSS ePub reader for Linux. It seems to | offer all of the customization options you listed. | | https://johnfactotum.github.io/foliate/ | imedadel wrote: | Just downloaded it. It solves every single problem I had. | Thanks! | xtracto wrote: | There's BIbi which is a nice open source ePub reader ( | https://github.com/satorumurmur/bibi ) ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-01-28 23:00 UTC)