Thursday, March 28, 2013

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!

56 comments:

  1. OK, sounds good.
    But please keep the old version still available (marked as no support) for users on 2.3.x :-)

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  2. Wasn't sure project was still alive. Thank you so much for the great app. Best in class!

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  3. The new version looks really nice!!
    I'm having problems when I try to add a bookmark to the book that I was reading with the 1.X version, and the index doesn't work well. With new books I don't have those problems.

    I can send you that book I you need to check something.

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  4. Looks much better, I'd still like to be able to get more info about the book like the filename as it can be hard sometimes to work out which is next in a series etc.

    Anyway the "Whoops, something is wrong, I can't open this book" bug still exists in this new version.

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  5. how do i go back to the previous version. I like the full black background with white words and this version doesn't support pdf

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    1. You can still have full black background with white words. Just press menu, theme, and choose Black & White. As for pdf support, it's experimental in the old version, and didn't really work for most people so I temperarily disabled it, and it'll be back later when I found a better pdf render solution. Sorry about the inconvinence.

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    2. I felt the B & W toggle button was a nice option vs having to going through the menu options. Quick & easy. Please change it back.

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  6. Nice update! When will you implement a feature for searching in books?

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  7. Hey man, nice work, but the pdf worked for me and now i can't read my books... :( can you readd that possibility adding the text "maybe for some pdf it doesn't work"?
    Thanks for your job.

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    1. I guess I've seen too many negative reviews about the partial pdf support so I thought that nobody is really using it. But it looks like it at least worked for some people, so you'll get it back very soon.

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  8. Hi,

    first of all, I have been using Fabrik on a daily basis since I installed the previous version last year and I am very satisfied with it!
    I must say that the update looks really nice, but it crashes half of the times on my Galaxy S2 with android 4.1.2... I'm sure it will get fixed sooner or later. Tonight I will try on my Tab if it experiences crashes too.

    Anyway, keep up the good work!

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    Replies
    1. Just uploaded some hot bug fixes. Hope it'll solve your crashes. Sorry about that :)

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    2. Thanks!

      I'll give you feedback ASAP!

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    3. Yep, it works fine now....

      But, I've discovered a bug on my galaxy tab 2 (android 4.0.4).The background is always a kind of gingham fabric, even when I try to change to black&white or paper...
      Many thanks for looking into this one!

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    4. I'll second this. The fabric background stays in all the formats. I would vote to soften or lighten the fabric background (or add another one for choice) as it's a little bold. I also can't seem to get the "Back & White" to work. I use this at night, daily.

      Thank you Eric for a great product. I use it on two devices every day!

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    5. Also not a fan of the gingham style background. However, here's my experience.

      Bad: Official CM 10.1 (4.2.2), Unofficial CM 10.0 (4.1.1), and PA 2.13 (4.1)

      Good: 2x SGS3 (4.1.2)

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    6. Let me clarify... the 'Bad' above are plagued by the gingham fabric background and are limited to changing only shades of grey. There is no black option. No themes, colors or day/night choices work as expected. The 'Good' SGS3's are not plagued by these issues, they do work as expected when selecting themes, colors and day/night.

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    7. SDC111 is "spot on". My SGS3 works fine. My Asus Transformer Prime does not.

      Hope this helps.

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    8. Great work on the update, Eric! Fabrik v2.03 themes, colors and day/night selections work properly now on all _my_ versions.

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  9. Sorry, but i've found another couple bug... It didn't sync my two devices (samsung galaxy tab 8.9 with android 3.2 and an alcatel 997d with android 4) and on the smartphone there isn't the button for sync... :S
    Can I also ask for a new feature for new version? It will be really nice if it will be possible to read also doc, docx, lit and other text files. Don't worry, is not urgent, but i think that a lot of people will appreciate that :-)

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  10. Hi. I'm also user of Fabric pro since last couple of months. After newest update Fabric constantly crashes on opening *.mobi files or gives error "unsupported compression method". It's strange, cause erlier versions of Fabric has no problem with it.

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  11. Having severe issues with a large epub (e books in one). Can't bookmark, not saving progress, taking 10 minutes ti transition between chapters... etc. Very frustrating, can get the old apk?

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  12. With 2.01 bookmarks work perfectly, but the index of some books don't. It only detects the first page of the book (the cover) and the first page of the first chapter.

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  13. REQUEST: Please consider adding "auto sync" while reading. This would save an occasional issue of not getting a book sync'd properly (user error) and opening with second device and losing the latest read page.

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  14. The new themes are too light maybe ... You could also leave the old theme with the black background? thanks

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    Replies
    1. Of course. Press menu, theme, and select Black & White.

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  15. hi. in every theme background looks like this https://www.dropbox.com/s/nu5g2mzsss5i62o/2013-03-30%2012.00.13.jpeg
    it's on tablet novo7 venus with android 4.1.1
    also some epubs are loading very slow and you have to wait for page to flip

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    1. I have a same background issue. There are no black background. :-( Yes, I've changed the tame and used the night scheme.
      And it seems opening a new book is much more slower than with the old version. It's take ages...
      Samsung Galaxy Tab 7 plus.

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    2. Please upgrade to 2.03, which should fix this bug. If not, please comment again.

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    3. That did it Eric. Great job.

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  16. Ever since I updated the app to version 2, the table of contents, bookmarks don't work. When I open a book, it does not remember the last page I was reading. When I try to use the bookmarks it only said please wait for the book to render completely! And this is a book I've been reading for hours. So basically I have no way to go back to the last read page. It is frustrating to have to turn each and every page till I get to page 223 to read since nothing else works!

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    1. Is this happing to all your books? Or just some of them? Maybe you can email one of your books to me so I can take a look at it? Please send the email to fabrikreader(at)gmail.com

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    2. I have mailed one of my books to you. And the issue is happening to all my books, they're all stuck at 0 or 3%, I cannot bookmark or see the table of contents.
      Thank you for such prompt replies and I hope this gets fixed. Fabrik is my favorite reader app and the only one I've paid for till date :-D

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    3. Just thought I'd let you know, it only happens with books that I was reading in the old version. Books that I've added only to version 2 all work correctly.

      I love the page numbers option! Thank you so much for that feature.

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    4. Another update: I deleted all my books and imported them again. Now bookmarks work, as well as syncing the last read page. Only thing which doesn't work is the TOC. I checked the books on my laptop and they work fine there.

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  17. I update to version 2.03 my phone and my tablet but i can't understand why on my tablet (samsung galaxy tab 8.9 with android 3.2) it didn't sync the books (actually it didn't add also the books that are in the folder.
    The rest of the applicatin works really fine, also the re-added support for pdf :-)

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    1. Sorry, but i've found maybe the problem of the sync... The version installed on the tablet is the 1.43.
      I've tried to uninstall and install again the qpplication, but the versin is always the same, while in the phone is 2.03.
      Maybe is a problem because I bought the pro application?

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    2. I think this is because your tablet is running android 2.x or 3.x, which is not supported by Fabrik Reader 2.0. I'll see what I can do to fix the sync between 1.43 and 2.0.

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    3. Ok, thanks a lot :-)
      You are really amazing :-)

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    4. Hi!

      I have similar problem. My tablet runs on android 2.3.6 and my second phone also runs on android 2.3.6. However my main phone runs on android 4.2.2, and was the last device to sync my dropbox account, so now version 1.43 won't sync books, it doesn't even load them anymore so I'm getting a blank list although all my books are there and running fine on version 2.13. Any help?

      Thanks!

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  19. HI, With the 2.03 update the black background issue is gone! Great!!!

    That would be marvelous if you can find out the sync between the 2.x and 1.43 version. :-)

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  20. Apart from how slow the font size changes are another annoying feature is that the app now places an artificial (and too low) a limit on the upper font size. I crank the font up so I don't need my glasses and can't get it big enough. It also doesn't say its reached the limit either. Anyway for moment no major issues with the new version :-)

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  21. I love the new version!

    Looks great and works good. I have to admit I've been away for a while because the epub support wasn't good enough in the previous version. But now I'm back to my favorite reader!

    My only major problem now is that huge books don't load properly and I have to manually flip to the page I want. A bit tedious... :) Or maybe they do load, I just haven't waited long enough?

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  22. Thank you so much for this software, by now it is pretty much exactly what I was looking for in a eBook reader.

    There are some minor issues though:

    - Finished books don't disappear from the "Recent" list, and new ones are added in some semi-random order, so the list becomes very confusing after a while. Move the 100% books to the bottom, or add an option to hide them.
    - The soft buttons on the Nexus 4 are not hidden correctly. When I suspend the device while reading, then wake it up again, soft buttons will be not be grayed out as supposed to be, which is a bit distracting.
    - Fonts and font sizes are a bit strange and maybe a delicate issue, but I would prefer to set them globally per device instead of adjusting them per book.
    - The border around the pages in the white theme looks... strange. It looks like my display aged and illumination is uneven. I would prefer an all-white background.
    - There is no "report an issue" button and no issue tracker. I would rather type those things into some dedicated system than into a blog post comment.

    But, those are indeed relatively minor. Thanks again for doing us all the favor of working on the pitiful ebook situation on Android and doing it right.

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  23. Hi. I really love your app! I've been looking for a good app to view my .pdf books in and this is the best one I've found. :)

    My only issue is that, as far as I can tell, there's not a way to change the title and author of the books I add, though I can change the cover. If you could add this feature (or explain to me how to do it in case I'm just blind, lol), that'd be great! :)

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  24. Hello, just purchased your pro version and it is great. However i have a feature request. Is it possible when i sort my books by progress that those books are on top, not at the bottom, since i have many books and i want to continue reading a book but its always at the bottom. Thanks!

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  25. For the love of God I can't seem to remove the bookmarks (free version)! I have like 3 dozens bookmarks already. Please fix. Android 4.04.

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    1. Okay, I figured it out. For anyone else wondering how to tag books in Fabrik: double-tap the book.

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