Eine berechtigte Frage an das ePub-Standard-Fachgremium. ePub-Projekte basieren auf reinen Webstandards, die mit einigen Steuerdateien angereichert werden. Warum laufen also ePub-Module nicht einfach nativ in einem Webbrowser? Warum braucht es spezielle Reader, die dann wiederum proprietär sind und die Webstandards eben nicht immer unterstützen? #ePub #HTML #Standards #Evolution
Why not regular Web-Browsers?
in the past five years, I have learned much about ePub. One of the biggest problems since I started was to find a good reader or reading software. I often hear that ePub is so bad. But its not the fault of ePub. It’s mostly the fault of the ereader (software). There are so many out there for every system you may think about (a few hundred or even more).
But there is no reader really taking advantage of the ePub features. Not even close. Most don’t know how to display basics. Readium is catastrophic in terms of user experience. iBooks has too much Apple specific features integrated to get things work. Most Android Readers can’t display obfuscated fonts, CSS3 or even simple images. Kobo and custom CSS is no good idea. Tolino’s software is pre-millenium. ADE has a huge bug problem. Windows,… not to talk about the results in the available readers. And these are already the good and popular ones.
What I don’t understand. The major parts of ePub are completely based on common web standards and its good so. Only things like font obfuscation, toc/nav, … are specific parts of ePub.
So my question to you (the IDPF) would be: Why don’t you discuss with the Web-Browser Developers to integrate the ePub specific things into their browsers, so ePubs (refl. and fxl) can be natively read by Firefox, Chrome, Safari, IE, Opera, all kind of mobile devices integrated browsers, etc? Or why don’t you develop a plugin which uses the popular browser rendering engines with its complete potential. Why not regular Web-Browsers? | International Digital Publishing Forum
