[HN Gopher] Show HN: A usable eBook reader inside a browser (azw...
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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 )
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(page generated 2021-01-28 23:00 UTC)