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.

Comments

[prk]

I can't recall, but are you using calibre for library management?

prk.

[samvara]

Yeah, it's fine for library management on my desktop, by which I mean storing books, and not reading from but it's no use when I'm on the iPad and out and about.

I'm also not finding it particularly useful for moving files to and from the iPad - although I think that's a limitation of iTunes - which I have finally crashed repeatedly.