Adobe Digital Editions 2.0 Now Available
Adobe’s much maligned reading app for Windows got an update this week. It’s now officially in to 2.0 and out of the beta testing which Adobe had been running for the past year or so.
I don’t have a full update list for the current release, so I cannot say for sure if it supports some much desired features like Epub3, but I do know that a previous update added support for Japanese text. And from the release notes I can see that not all text styles are support (right to left, overprint, and others) nor does this app support embedded audio and video.
My source is reporting that the app has better support for fonts, and it appears that this app no longer needs to have fonts embedded in the Epub for them to work. There are also a number of bugs mentioned in the release notes, so you might want to read up before you download the update from Adobe.
Comments
eAnagnostis September 26, 2012 um 2:40 pm
Nate, thanks for linking back to my post.
In ADE 2.0 there is an new option for full screen reading and also a highlight option (previously it was just notes and bookmarks and, in fact, it was a bookmark with the option of a note). There is a redesign, in terms of colors etc. The main focus of 2.0 is accessibility support text-to-speech with various programms for Windows PCs and Macs (see FAQ at Adobe’s website).
That there is no support for embedded audio and video probably suggests there is no support for EPUB3 (plus, if there was, they would mention it, I believe).
As to the fonts, there is no need for embedding them at least for Greek (previously there was a problem). For other languages I do not know.
During the installation, migration of ebooks and Adobe ID was successful. Unistalling the previous version through Adobe intaller failed (Windows 7). You have to do it manually. But there is no way to update through the older version of the program. You have to re-install it. And you can actually keep both versions as long as you like – so there is no risk in installing 2.0.
Nate Hoffelder September 26, 2012 um 3:00 pm
But I thought this app already was accessible in the previous versions. Now that i think about it, accessibility was supposed to be covered by the 1.5 release. I’m not sure it worked all that well but it was supposed to be there.
Edit: And I just double checked with the old version which I had not yet replaced. It already supported highlights.
eAnagnostis September 26, 2012 um 3:55 pm
I haven’t personally checked the accessibility features, but that’s what Adobe is saying: "Version 2.0 is an update to the popular Digital Editions 1.7 application. If you’re familiar with the Digital Editions 1.8 Preview we had on Adobe labs, it will look familiar. The primary focus of this release is support for accessibility." (http://www.adobe.com/products/digital-editions/faq.html – 1st question).
As to highlights, well in a way your are right. In the previous version, there was the option of highlighting text and then make this text as bookmark or add a note. Something like 3 in 1. The 3 functions (bookmark, highlight, note) are now more distinct, like in most mobile apps.
Logan Kennelly September 26, 2012 um 7:25 pm
Holy crap! It happened!
B&N has been working toward this point for so many years I thought they’d given up. The original word was sometime in 2010, but definitely by the end. (I know there have been a few inter-rim release, but they finally support the newer RMSDK (read B&N) and proper accessibility (by moving to new Adobe frameworks).)
http://www.mobileread.com/forums/showpost.php?p=698511
Congratulations, Adobe! I’m glad you finally have this behind you so you can get back to advancing the ePub platform.
Robert Nagle September 26, 2012 um 11:42 pm
Sorry, guys I’m having the damndest time installing on my Vista 64 machine. I had the 1.x version previously. I posted my issue here. http://forums.adobe.com/thread/1070629
From the FAQ:
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I’m having trouble installing Digital Editions. Where can I get support?
Please review the "Getting started" section on the Adobe Digital Editions home page, or visit the Customer Service page.
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Sounds reasonable, except there is no Getting Started section, and the Customer Service page (which is a hyperlink) just links to that same FAQ page. I downloaded the Getting Started ebook only to discover that it crashes my 1.7 ADE….. Needless to say, my confidence in the 2.0 edition is not high….
Ingo Lembcke, Hamburg September 27, 2012 um 1:20 pm
I have the Mac-Verson installed and read a few days ago from someone who complained the small fonts and white on black in the old version. That is solved in the Mac-Version, more Font-Sizes are available and it is the usual black on white. So far so good.
I also tried to install in my old XP-Setup the new Adobe Digital Edt. (ADE). This failed: first it wanted a new .NET-Framework (3.5), which I had to install before, that done, and a needed Reboot later, the Installation-Program did not start at all. A new download resulted in the same problem.
Standalone installation ? Google showed me a website from Adobe with a button to Install ADE, I tried that, worked and … I had just installed the old version 1.7.x . Yeah, the joy.
No idea as of yet how to proceed, but as I do not need it to be running under Windows XP, I will probably just leave it for now and visit the problem in a few weeks again.