Stanza has been updated for the iPad—I just gave it a quick test spin after it showed up tonight in the App store. Hooray! Stanza was no small reason why I bought an iPad, and I was endlessly disappointed when a high-res version didn’t appear as soon as the machine came out.
The new version so far seems more or less like the old. The interface remains logical, and you can still hook up with a bunch of free and commercial sites from within the app.
I just wish that Amazon would offer Stanza as an option for reading Kindle-format books, not just the ePub variety (even though I continue to hope that the e-book world will eventually standardize on nonDRMed ePub).
Meanwhile three cheers for Amazon, which bought Lexcycle, Stanza’s developers, for allowing Stanza development to continue. The new version, like the old, will also work on the iPod Touch and iPhone.
Other new features in the 3.0 update, include PDF, DjVu and Comic Book Archive support, as well as Turkish and Bulgarian translations.
And for “devices running iPhone 3.2 and higher,” users will be able to “transfer books via iTune by dragging files into the ‘Stanza Documents’ part of the ‘File Sharing’ section at the bottom of the ‘Apps"’ tab that appears when you select your iPad from the ‘Devices’ list in i Tunes.” Also, users will be able to “open books directly from web pages and e-mail attachments.”
I’m sure Paul and Chris will want to weigh in with their own opinions, and so will other TeleRead community members. But for me—at least based on my brief tryout and subject to change—here’s a big thumbs-up.
Update, 12:22 a.m., June 4: The Bonjour desktop program, which Stanza uses for file transfers from desktops, isn’t working on my HP. I don’t know if the fault is limited to my system or will affect others. I can download files directly to the iPad from public domain sites, etc., just fine.
Update, 1:29 a.m.: Comment spotted in App Store: “The PDF support seems to work very well. I dropped a couple of my D&D Dungeon PDFs into Stanza to give it a try, and they look terrific. ‘Like they were made to display on the iPad’, according to my girlfriend.” OK, so I’ll forget about the fancy tricks for now and use iTunes to pick up the PDFs.
Nope. Does not work for me. Even though the app has the iPad + sign, it just downoads the iPhone version with pixel doubling for the iPad. Don’t know how you got your version.
For once, Hurray for Amazon.
I concur that this is the best reader on the iphone and was eagerly awaiting its release on the ipad.
It will be interesting to see how its pdf capabilities compare to goodreader
Not everyone will get the same version at once. Sorry your update didn’t arrive as quickly as mine.
David
Tweet from Stanza folks:
stanza_reader Stanza 3 with iPad support now available at http://iTunes.com/apps/Stanza !
Huh. I’ll have to check that out. And here I thought Amazon was not going to let Stanza do it.
Newby instructions for using Stanza-supplied link??
Thanks, Don
I’m downloading this now…if it will still load/read my Secure eReader purchases from Peanut Press/eReader/Fictionwise, I’ll be significantly happier with the iPad reading situation. (I still prefer the eReader interface, though.)
Keep us posted, Chris! I don’t know the current answer to your question.
The latest is that I’m trying to see if I can download PDFs directly from Google Books. I pasted in the URL of the file of The Red Badge of Courage after finding it through a Web browser. Then I went to Stanza’s download section, typed a plus mark and entered the name of the book and the URL. Uploading began.
I got a “Timeout” message, but probably the fault is my Net connection. I might try with a shorter book. I hope others will do their own experimentation with this direct download feature and the PDF format from Google.
While ePub is my fave, PDF is nice for the time when I am curious about the looks of a paper edition.
For now, I might quit, but ideally some TeleRead reader in Europe or whatever will have the answer for me by the time I wake up. Actually I guess I’ll do a nonPDF screenshot for the just-entered post.
Thanks,
David
NOTIFICATION !!
The iPad version has popped up in the store. Search for ‘stanza’.
Regards, Don
Share your impressions, Don; thanks, and have fun! For me, it’s log-off time, if I can ever break away. The just-posted VBookz news was too important to ignore.
David
Superb! I had tried Bookshelf, ReadMe, iBooks, Kobo and others but eventually went back to Stanza for the flexibility of layout options and Dropbox integration. Now with this version I am content!
Christo,
If possible, how about a hint on how to use Dropbox with the iPad version of Stanza. I already have pdf’s in Dropbox for use with Goodreader, but I’d like to see if Stanza has more flexibility with pdf’s, especially with yellow text on black background.
TIA, Don
Doin’ the happy dance in my jammies!
My entire eReader/Fictionwise library is available, and eReader books work!
(or at least one of them does).
‘scuse me while I wander off to a dark cafe to catch up on my TBR list. 🙂
Don
I used the calibre2opds tool. details are at
http://wiki.mobileread.com/wiki/Calibre2opds
of course this assumes you are using Calibre as well!
Cannot read djvu files on my IPad.
Funny, djvu reader works on stanza for iphone, but display is too small.
Djvu works. I don’t know if there is a conversion going on or not, because it takes a few minutes for my 2mb djvu to be uploaded in itune. for a similar size pf, it takes less time>