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Readium Epub3 Reading App Now Available in Most Browsers

Have you been following the latest Epub3 news and regretted not being about to play with it yourself because you didn’t have an iThing or didn’t want to install Chrome? I have a treat for you.

There’s a new cloud version of Readium. It’s still strictly in beta, and you’re not able to upload your own ebooks. But if you want to see the latest features enabled by Epub3, now you can read several of the demo Epub3 files from the IDPF archive.

Readium was launched by the IDPF in February of this year. It was originally intended as a proof of concept app which developers could compare their own home-built Epub3 reading apps to, but it has since been adopted by some readers and institutions.

In fact, just a few days ago Benetech announced that their new accessible browser based reading app, which is used by thousands of visually impaired readers, was now based on Readium. That app was modified heavily and tweaked to fill Benetech’s needs, and at least some of the improvements which Benetech made will be integrated back into the core Readium app.

You can find the Readium Cloud Reader here. I was just playing with it in Firefox, to be honest it is rather buggy. But it is an interesting option, and it is going to get better.

Readium Cloud Reader

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Comments


cookie October 26, 2012 um 5:07 pm

How goes your Windows 8 upgrade?


Frank Lowney December 25, 2013 um 3:52 pm

Please pardon my ignorance but is this an instance of Readium,js or something else? If something else, how does it differ from Readium.js and the Readium plug-in for Chrome?
Also, what does an iThing (http://aithing.weebly.com) have to do with all of this?

Nate Hoffelder December 25, 2013 um 4:16 pm

This post dates to October 2012, so it predates Readium.js considerably. The implementation mentioned in this post is related to the Chrome plugin, but it has been refactored so it functions as a website/webapp.

And iThing is a catchall term for Apple’s iPad, iPhone, iPod Touch, etc.


Frank Lowney December 25, 2013 um 4:29 pm

Thanks, Nate, for the clarification on the definition of iThing.
As for this refactored version of the Chrome plug-in, I’m more confused than I was before. As I read about Readium.js at http://readium.org/news/announcing-readiumjs-a-javascript-library-for-browser-based-epub-3-reading, I see it described as: "… the Readium Web project is being refactored to deliver a JavaScript library for browser-based EPUB 3 reading."
So, the "refactored" term leads me to think that the web eReader cited above is Readium.js or some close relative. Not?
What I’m hoping to find is a living example of Readium.js.


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