new e-reader app

[spankyistheman92]

how do you download books? do you have to have a zune pass or microsoft points?

[alexiznumber1]

no you dont... you just use the catalog and download. however, idk how to get other books on it. its kind of a bummer that every thing on there is like pre-50's.

[spankyistheman92]

i was searching terms like UFC and such got books about matt hughes and chuck liddell but it wnt let me download. it did how ever let me download a book about criticzing humes

[alexiznumber1]

yea i clicked on "ebook store" and it wont let me download anything from there.

[Deathscythe]

Interesting and pretty big app, but I don't like e-books and rather have a real book instead(imo, do what you wanna do) . But Low Quality apps? Yeah Right

[ubi79]

Originally Posted by alexiznumber1

no you dont... you just use the catalog and download. however, idk how to get other books on it. its kind of a bummer that every thing on there is like pre-50's.

Because it's public domain books: they need to be at least 50 years old, I believe.

[winrez]

I'm Loving the ebook reader!


I was always wishing Zune had something like this and my hopes went down when Microsoft Reader was scrapped

[Olley]

Bugs in the Zune Reader app. I downloaded Benjamen buttons, then opened it to read. Went back to the main menu and change the setting from dark to light. Went back to the menu, then my book, then picked the book to read. Picked Last reading Position.

For some reason the dark/light setting page showed up on top of the screen, and no matter what I could do I couldn't get it off the screen. Had to close the app.

On another subject, I was happy to discover two-fingers spread/pinch would enlarge or reduce the size of the text.

[Ajaxmonkey]

The only thing that I hate is that, it has to use wifi even to read the downloaded books, I may be otg you know.

[epithetless]

Originally Posted by Ajaxmonkey

The only thing that I hate is that, it has to use wifi even to read the downloaded books, I may be otg you know.

Wait, seriously?

[x1n30]

Originally Posted by Ajaxmonkey

The only thing that I hate is that, it has to use wifi even to read the downloaded books, I may be otg you know.

No, you don't have to have Wifi to read books that you've downloaded - it tries to connect when you start using it, but it still lets you use it even if it can't.

[epithetless]

Originally Posted by x1n30

No, you don't have to have Wifi to read books that you've downloaded - it tries to connect when you start using it, but it still lets you use it even if it can't.

Okay, that makes more sense.

[Olley]

Any reason the pages have to scroll instead of flip like 99% of the ebook apps out there? Unnatural and inefficient to have to slide text up read on. There is a reason the old-fashion book analogy persists.

[alexiznumber1]

Ok so i think you have to do this:

http://dearauthor.com/wordpress/2010...-opds-dropbox/

I havent tried it (too much work and kind of complicated) but i guess itll work.
also, if you just dropbox an epub file it'll work.
although....its only worked for me once ://
i wish Dave would give some feed back on this.

plus. a lot of books wont download from the default catalog and its real buggy and slowish.
and, you must use "http://" before the site url. you dont have to use www but you do have to use http.

so hopefully someone can make this much simpler for us all.

[alexiznumber1]

Sorry for the double post but i figured this would be a way to bring this thread more attention.

anywho, i tried what i stated before ^^ its not as hard as it appears. you just download, install, click on an jar file and set up the catalog. The catalog works great, it shows up on my computer and theres even a dropbox link.

However...it does not work on the Zune ://
yes, it is an OPDS catalog. Yes i tried the XML and HTML Links. it won't work. Dave, please help us out with this. The guys on Zuneboards cant find a way to do this either.

[james1]

you cant download books from ebook store for some reason, the only books you seem to be able to download are some original books and all of the public domain books. shame you can only have up to 10 books on it at a time though. it doesnt have a word limit or file size limit, just 10 books and thats it. so, any of you wanting lots of short stories are screwed. for now, im sticking to kafka lol. also it seems very buggy...

[alexiznumber1]

wow. this app is seriously handicapped.
plus, none of the other OPDS sites ive used have worked

[steinburger1109]

Looks to me like it might have been a bit rushed...

[alexiznumber1]

i honestly think it was. you cant delete bookmarks or have more than 10 books and the import process is pretty much impossible. no other catalogs will work (except once but it was usless as it wasnt mine)
and now dropbox won't work. so yea they seriously need to update it.

[DaveMac-MS]

Originally Posted by Olley

Any reason the pages have to scroll instead of flip like 99% of the ebook apps out there? Unnatural and inefficient to have to slide text up read on. There is a reason the old-fashion book analogy persists.

So this app was an employee developed title submitted to us - I'm going to see if I can get the employee in question to come on the forum here and offer some comment about the functionality, etc...

I do remember us talking about this very point though - flipping versus scrolling. There were technical limitations that made flipping very, very difficult.

Don't forget that these apps are all built using the XNA Game SDK - it is, in some cases, very difficult to do things in a game SDK that would otherwise be fairly easy in an app SDK. See my many posts about the Zune HD not being designed as a portable apps devices (despite our efforts to deliver as much as we can within those constraints).

Cheers, Dave.