TeleRead: Bring the E-Books Home
News & views on e-books, libraries, publishing and related topics
New versions for Bookshelf, Stanza iPhone readers
Friday, April 3rd, 2009
The best keep on getting better. Both Bookshelf and Stanza have come out with new versions that add some useful new features.
This actually hit a few weeks ago, and I had not gotten around to reviewing it until now. It adds a number of useful new features, most notably the ability to download compatible e-books directly from Mobile Safari. It accomplishes this by means of a new Javascript bookmarklet that rewrites webpages within Mobile Safari’s memory, replacing “http:” with a new prefix to tell Safari to let Bookshelf download them.
I tested this bookmarklet with the Bookshelf test page, downloading a copy of Dracula onto my device. It worked just fine, creating a new “Safari downloads” folder within my library and putting the book into it. This will be a very useful way to get new Mobi, Plucker, and PalmDoc books onto your device directly from the web, and is something that other e-book apps could stand to copy.
One word of warning, though: the recommended method for installing the bookmarklet is to use a web browser to sync it to your Mobile Safari app. If you don’t already sync bookmarks this way, your entire collection of bookmarks on the device could get wiped out when you start. Also, if you sync bookmarks from Safari on your desktop, it will stick a couple of useless bookmark folders on your device that cannot be easily deleted.
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'The book’s women...radiate that screwball-comedy pizzazz a la Roz Russell’s Hildy Johnson in the film His Girl Friday.'
