Comments on: EPUB reader add-on for Firefox

By: Jane Hadley

Jane Hadley — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 12:05:55 +0000

I just downloaded this for Firefox on my Ubuntu Netbook Remix operating system. It seems to work splendidly. I had been having trouble finding an epub reader that would work. This fills the bill! Thanks so much, Michael!

By: Michael Volz

Michael Volz — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 13:59:42 +0000

Just wanted to let you know, that a new EPUBReader version is available. It’s now possible to navigate through the ePub-file using navigaton buttons. You can imagine, that this was the most requested change .

By: Jon Noring

Jon Noring — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:29:54 +0000

In my previous comment, in the “btw” paragraph, I’d like to edit:

original: (and thus be UTF-8 conformant)

edit: (and thus be both UTF-8 and ISO-10646 conformant)

By: Jon Noring

Jon Noring — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 15:05:44 +0000

Great work, Michael Volz! (I’ll be emailing you some thoughts about your plug-in after experimenting with it…)

Martin and Steve: Unless the problem with the plug-in not properly rendering non-Basic Latin characters in the NCX (such as em-dashes and accented characters) has been fixed by Michael in the latest plug-in which I tried, you may consider checking your NCX to be sure the text encoding is consistent with the declared text encoding of the XML document.

For example, if no ‘encoding=”"‘ is in the XML prolog, then the document MUST be UTF-8 or UTF-16 encoded. It is not uncommon for people to inadvertently use ISO-10646 encoding in XML documents and then not declaring it as such in the XML prolog.

(I’m not sure if it’s within the purview of epubcheck to check for proper encoding of the XML documents used in ePub, but I’ll post something to the epubcheck group and ask. My biggest fear is that epubcheck is not doing the checking, and some publishers are producing NCX which do not conform to XML’s rules on text encoding.)

Btw, to avoid text encoding problems and to use the widest range of text editors, I almost always use numeric character references for the non-ASCII unicode characters. This means my XML will always conform to ASCII (and thus be UTF-8 conformant) with the further bonus that it is easy for me, with a text editor, to locate and survey the non-ASCII characters used in the content. Just a suggestion for those who hand-edit XML for ePub.

By: Mike Cook

Mike Cook — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 19:53:15 +0000

I wanted to give this another go on my home computer and the images are all working fine…looks like there’s a problem with my works computer.

By: Michael Volz

Michael Volz — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 13:48:20 +0000

The problem on Unix machines is fixed!

Please install the new version 1.0.5 which is now available: https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/45281. I fixed also some other bugs, so it makes sense for everyone to upgrade.

One word about the experimental status on the Mozilla website: “experimental” means, that the addon is still not offically reviewed by the Mozilla guys. As I’ve learned this can take several weeks . I’m very unhappy about that situation because I’m sure that many people don’t try EPUBReader because of his status.

If you experience any problems or have got ideas for changes, please contact me via my website: http://www.epubconvert.com/epubreader/

By: Mike Cook

Mike Cook — Mon, 02 Nov 2009 09:34:52 +0000

I only gave this a quick go but when trying some of the illustrated books from epubBooks.com none of the images showed.

By: David Teller

David Teller — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 11:52:17 +0000

Have you considered taking over OpenBerg? Be my guest, I just don’t have time to work on it anymore.

By: Michael Pastore

Michael Pastore — Sun, 01 Nov 2009 00:03:57 +0000

Wonderful work on EPUBReader, Michael Volz: thank you very much.

Some notes:

@Paul: Works fine on my Mac.

@pond: Is that a bug or a feature?

@Martin Jenny:
The book covers do display perfectly — but there is one exception. Your problem could be the aspect ratio of the book covers you are trying to view. I struggled with that problem when trying to read EPUBs using Stanza Desktop. The EPUB covers that I made were too wide, compared with the height, to be displayed. When I fixed the aspect ratios — put my EPUB book covers on a slim-down diet — then the covers showed themselves without problems.

@Michael Volz:
Just a little more information on the Firefox Add-on web page might be helpful to new users. I would add: To read an EPUB ebook already downloaded to your computer, drag it into a window in Firefox. (That works for Macs, does it work for Windows PCs ?)

If everyone who tries this add-on leaves some feedback on the Firefox web page for the add-on, then the project could move from the status “Experimental Add-on” to (possibly) “Featured” or “Recommended” add-on. Which would help to promote the non-DRMed EPUB format.

Michael Pastore
50 Benefits of Ebooks

By: pond

pond — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 22:44:35 +0000

The biggest problem, so far unmentioned: the extension will not, I presume, work with the commercial, DRM’d epub editions that most people want to read.

For the Google books, once Google gets the scannos cleaned up, it should be great. Good job, Michael; this is what’s great about open source (and Firefox).

By: Andy S

Andy S — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 20:56:03 +0000

Same on Ubuntu. The app only displays blank pages.

By: Eric Montgomery

Eric Montgomery — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 20:35:14 +0000

Doesn’t appear to work in Linux. I’m on a Fedora Core 11 machine running Firefox 3.5.4 and all I get is blank pages.

By: Martin Jenny

Martin Jenny — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 19:15:39 +0000

… and another thing.
After having installed the add-on trying to play a Quicktime movie crashes the browser. Has anyone had the same problem?

By: Martin Jenny

Martin Jenny — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 18:42:20 +0000

I tried it on some of my own ePubs, simple as well as complex ones. Rendering is fine, fast and stable. I found some small glitches:
- It did display my covers only partially (too big for the screen) although I use height=100% in the graphics tag. So it didn’t get this one right. Other images were ok.
- German umlauts are not displayed in the TOC but are correct in the text itself.
- On one occasion I had a single page (ending with a page-break) with a only a float right in it and epubreader put the whole float into the following page. I really would prefer, if forced page changes were observed correctly.
- It doesn’t jump from chapter to chapter in the text. So you have to select the chapters in the TOC.

Apart from that … great work!

By: Bruce

Bruce — Sat, 31 Oct 2009 18:31:32 +0000

I only get blank pages on FreeBSD with Firefox 3.5.3.