Screen shot 2010-03-11 at 6.18.32 PM.pngMonocle is a javascript ebook reader. According to their site:

Monocle is drop-in. You can embed a ‘book’ on any webpage with two lines of code — one to include the library, one to initialize the reader. Monocle is approximately 25kb and has no dependencies on external JavaScript libraries.

Monocle is as you like it. Out of the box it simply lets you turn the pages. It’s lean. But you can add controls — page numbers, tables of contents, scrubbers (to jump to a different place in the book), font-size magnifiers — or you can code your own. The reader is rendered in CSS3; it can be made to look like pretty much anything.

Monocle is designed for EPUB. Well, ultimately it doesn’t care if the source of the text is zipped up, DRM locked down, whether your TOC is in the NCX or plucked from a YAML file — it doesn’t handle unwrapping all the packaging. But the core tenets of the standard: XHTML files with a defined linear progression, and optionally a nested hierarchy of sections or chapters — that’s supported. In full colour. What’s better than a browser for rendering XHTML?

It’s also open source. Does anyone know anything about it?

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