2.2: Annotation for your summer!

Hey guys,

How is your summer going? Lying on some beach and reading your favorite novels with fabrik reader? Cool! My summer is kind of busy, but I think the efforts tend to pay off. So here it is: Fabrik Reader 2.2!

The most significant improvement in this version is the support for annotation, as well as notes (of course they are synchronized, like everything else with fabrik reader). Also some small UI tweaks have been made. Check out the following screenshots!

The last picture is a summary view of all your notes in a book. You'll see it by clicking the orange note counter in the right bottom corner of your book cover. As for the annotation toolbar, I'm sure you know what to do with it, so just poke around and have fun.

I've also redesigned the icon (again!), and here it is, hope you like it better than the last one :)

I think now with the support for annotation and notes, fabrik reader is somewhat feature complete. Personally I can't really think of any major feature that's missing. I'm aware of many small bugs and glitches here and there though, and don't worry, fixes will keep coming. I've also created a place for you guys to submit issues or feature requests: http://fabrikreader.helpshift.com/. So if you see anything out of ordinary, or you have some exciting new ideas, you know what to do :)

That's it. Enjoy!

Fabrik 2.1: Google Drive Support

Hey guys,

This time it's really simple: Google Drive support is finally coming! With a new splash screen!

So if you're synching with Dropbox right now and want to switch to Google Drive, just press menu, and select Cloud, and you'll be redirecting to this splash screen, in which you can choose to link to Google Drive.

I'm trying my best to make Fabrik as perfect as it can be. So, as always, if you run into any problem at all, please contact me. I may not be able to response in time, but I'll definitely read your message and put them in my (very long) todo list. Enjoy!

Fabrik Reader 2.0: Here we go!

Hey guys,

I bet you all miss me :)

It's been three month since I last blogged here. I have to admit that I'm really really lazy when it comes to blogging and social networking and stuff. But, I've been really busy coding and designing, so after some really hard work, here it is, a brand new Fabrik Reader 2.0.

Now, first impression:

Hope you like it :) And please ignore the HTC brand, they didn't pay me... It's just that I have an one x, so obviously my screenshots can be perfectly aligned with an one x photo.

The UI redesign is just an appetizer. The biggest change in version 2.0 is a brand new render engine, which can handle CSS. So now your epub books will look much much better than 1.x. And if you don't like the style that comes with your book, you can choose to override it with two pre-defined styles: Web and Old Fashioned, which is basically left aligned modern web style and old fashioned print book like style (see the screenshots below). BTW, you got page number instead of percentage under each page now!

Feeling good, huh? Let's bring up even more good stuff: tagging your books! In version 2.0, you can give your books tags, and you can later filter your books by the tags you defined. So you never have to worry about how to organize your massive book collection. See those nice little tags in the dropdown navigation menu?

Also in version 2.0, a new reading theme has been added, and it is even more easy on your eyes. Page turn animation and text selection have also been optimized.

Unfortunately, I have to admit that it's not all great news. Begin from Fabrik Reader 2.0, I decided to drop support for Android version 2.x and 3.x. According to the statistics on Google Play, only 5% users are using Fabrik Reader on Android 2.x and 3.x, and the number is decreasing every month. So I think it's time to stop supporting the old android, it's simply too much work to maintain the backward compatibility. Besides, this new render engine is kind of hungry for resources, I don't think it can run smoothly on old devices any way.

There is also some unresolved issues with this new version. First, the css support is not perfect, only a subset of css 2 is supported. Second, the book rendering takes too much time and cpu resources, which means if you keep opening books, it could drain your battery. I'm still working on it and trying to figure out ways to optimize things. 

That's pretty much what I have to say about this new version. Oh, just one more thing, I'm pretty sure there is going to be bugs, since so much code has been changed. So, if you see anything wield, any book that can't  be opened, or have any other thought at all, please let me know!