BooksOnBoard have launched Bluefire, an eBook reader

[samvara]

Initial impressions:

• Blue is pretty but Logo means nothing to me

Set up:

• Easy, already have Adobe ID from disastrous attempt to buy my one Adobe DRM product so set up account, do not intend to use it at present.

First use:

• Two books pre-loaded; Help Guide and Treasure Island.
• Help is reasonably easy to read but functions were intuitive enough that I didn’t really need it - appreciate it existing.

Interface:

• Library: Toggle between Cover and List view = fine
• Library: Inability to remove thumbnail preview in list view = not fine - taking up valuable space
• Library: Toggle between Recent, Title and Author = not fine, crashes every time now that I have loaded over 400 eBooks
• Toggle between Library, Now Reading, Get Books and Info = fine if a little slow
• Now Reading: opens book = fine
• Get Books: loads options to explore - have not explored yet beyond adding my BooksOnBoard account details which was simple.
• Info: is a perfectly fine 'about' page

General Settings:

• Text Size: tap to make Smaller or Larger, not special but not crap
• Margins: 5 options, tap to select - not a bad way of doing it.
• Brightness: Slider bar - would prefer being able to get to this direct from reading page but usable
• Page Turn: Flip, Slide, Fade or Cut - all fine but transition is a bit slow
• Page Numbers in Margin: doesn’t appear to work
• Night Mode: White on black

Formatting Settings:

• Use Publisher’s Formatting defaults to ON
• Font Face: Serif, San Serif, Garamond and Gills Sans.
• Justified Text defaults to OFF, retains setting and applies to future books
• Text Color: Cute interface, flexible, all possible colours available.
• Background Color: ditto
• Theme: various presets of the above two options, kind of sad it doesn’t have the old classic Terminal

Launch: keeps telling me it has no internet connection which is true, but getting seriously annoying. I read in places with no connection, yes, it happens.

Adding books:

• Copying of books is drag and drop to iTunes (easy) but I get an error message saying I have no more space which is a lie so I have to do them in smallish chunks ~90 books at a time.
• Post book load time is sloooooooooooooooooooooow by which I mean 9:15 and still going, oh it crashed at 9:18 start again 9:18 crashed 9:20 - loaded!

Desired features:

• Tags (Fantasy, Science fiction, Fiction etc.)
• Collections (Texts, Fiction, Non-fiction, Fanfiction etc.)
• Series (Harry Potter [07])
• Favourites (5-star rating system?)
• ‘To Read’ toggle option that is easy to add from list or cover view.
• Search books by Title, Author, Series, Tags, Last Read, Unread, length of book
• Edit Title, Author, Series, Tags, Collections, Favourites etc.
• Aggregate by: Author, Tags, Series, Collections, Favourites etc.
• Alphabetising of Title and Author, I assume it’s there but I can’t use it because I have added over 400 books and it crashes repeatedly. Seriously, 400? I own more than 2,000 paper books; I expect to own significantly more eBooks.
• Add own preferred Fonts - or at least more choice
• Paragraph spacing control - to default to all books
• Line spacing control - to default to all books
• Library Management tool for ease of backup and recovery

Crashes on:

• Upload books via iTunes then open Bluefire Reader
• Close book after viewing or saving settings
• Sort by Author
• Sort by Title... getting really sick of the ‘no internet connection’ prompt
• Now Reading to Library toggle

Summary:

• Score: 5/10 - meets basic needs but could be more flexible in terms of reading preferences
• Needs: to stop crashing
• Needs: library management tools - for perspective, no one else has done this yet either.