A new version of Readium is up in the Chrome store, which also means I should go over some of the things that have been added to Readium in the last little while. A list of new additions follows, and as usual, if you have any questions, feel free to come find us on Github or on IRC - #readium on freenode.net.
Additionally, the wiki has been updated with new information on how you can learn more about Readium and get involved. I encourage you to go check it out!
EPUB Canonical Fragment Identifiers (CFIs)
A stand-alone library that provides support for the EPUB 3.0 CFI specification has been added to the Readium repository. This library has also been integrated into Readium and is used to support CFI based page-list navigation. This is demonstrated by the Georgia-CFI EPUB sample.
The intention is also to use the CFI library to support bookmarking and annotations in Readium in the next little while.
Rate and volume controls for Media Overlays
New UI controls have been added to the Readium toolbar to support rate-of-playback and volume adjustment for Media Overalys. The MO controls now appear only for the parts of EPUBs that have Media Overlays. This should make it more obvious when this feature is available in an EPUB, or a particular part of it.
A number of other improvements have been made to the way that Media Overlay playback reacts to changes in the state of the EPUB, such as for page-turns, loading new content documents and saving and reloading the position of the playback. Improvements have also been made to the way MO highlighting is shown on the screen.
Drag and drop and faster unpacking in the library view
A new library - and some HTML 5 web workers - are now being used to unpack .epub files. This has increased the speed of unpacking and means that for all but the largest EPUBs, loading the packed .epub files is probably pretty feasible. EPUB files can now also be dragged and dropped onto the library view to load them into Readium, rather than having to use the “add EPUB” button on the toolbar.
SVG and Bitmap images in spine
Both SVG and bitmap images, included in an EPUB as spine items, are now supported in Readium.
Internationalization framework
The Chrome i8ln framework has been added to Readium to provide language support for Readium. We hope to add to the set of translations available for Readium, so if you’re able to provide translations in a language besides English, this would be a good way to help out!
Internal changes
Aside from the changes above, we’re continually refactoring the code base, fixing bugs and looking out for new ways to improve Readium. As usual, providing feedback and creating issues in the issue tracker is always welcome.