Hello,
I first tried Ibis Reader on an iPad, and the download went pretty
well. I was beginning to wonder whether the difference in initial
responsiveness on the iPod Touch (much more sluggish with VoiceOver)
was due to space or VoiceOver. It definitely took a while for the
download from a selected source to go through on the iPod Touch and
settle in. I even power-cycled my device and checked the Wi-Fi
connection. This did work better after a while. I'd also be
interested to hear what others experience.
The page not updating experience, and advancing by double tapping the
"Next" button (to move focus there) and then double tapping on the
screen to advance was a little strange. VoiceOver reads through till
the end of the chapter, but doesn't update the current page. There
should be a more efficient way to work with this. Ibis Reader has
some glitches, but works better at present than Stanza does, and might
work really well with some feedback to the developer. The iBooks
interface is better than this, but it's not so easy to add third party
eBooks without syncing through iTunes.
Cheers,
Esther
On 10 May 2010, at 09:16, Hai Nguyen wrote:
Thank you Ester for this wonderful nugget. I've downloaded and
installed with no issues thus far. The only downside to this ap thus
far is the lack of responsiveness with Voiceover on the iPod touch.
I'm definitely interested to hear what others think.
On May 10, 2010, at 1:57 PM, marie Howarth wrote:
Thanks for this info Ester.
On 10 May 2010, at 19:47, Esther wrote:
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
--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
"MacVisionaries" group.
To post to this group, send email to [email protected].
To unsubscribe from this group, send email to
[email protected].
For more options, visit this group at
http://groups.google.com/group/macvisionaries?hl=en.
