Stanza Desktop Feature Requests and Bug Reports

Fri, 09/19/2008 - 12:30 — Anonymous

I currently am using Stanza Desktop 1.0.0b12. I'm running Mac OS 10.4.11 on a 2.4 GHz MacBook Pro with 4 GB of RAM. I only would use Stanza as an eBook reader on my Mac as I don't have a handheld device. Stanza is a great product from what I've used so far.

Feature requests:

- Search selected text in Google or Dictionary. It's an awesome advantage of reading eBooks, that to search for names, terms, etc on Google is available. To be able to do it directly from Stanza would be great. Perhaps add it as a contextual menu plugin?

- Ability to load bookmarks while in full screen mode. Perhaps a mini controller that hides itself, or is activated via keystroke.

- While in full screen mode, Mac OS X display dimmer and sleep needs to be disable as Preview does while in full screen mode. I have my screen dim all the time using Stanza!

- Built in library that will allow importing of all supported document formats, providing easy access and loading of material. An "iTunes" for eBooks?

- Ability to set text location, and not just page location, when bookmarking. Maybe the currently selected text will set as the bookmark location. Perhaps add it as a contextual menu plugin?

- Tie in with Apple Remote or third party products like AirClick, allowing page navigation via remote.

- Ability to set wether or not Stanza loads last viewed document upon application launch.

Bugs:

- Find feature jumps back to first page, but highlights searched text.

- Changing window size or going to full screen moves text position from current reading location, requiring bookmark to be loaded again.

- Stanza is now the default application for all sorts of system and hidden files.

Stanza Support

Thu, 09/24/2009 - 03:45 — barins

When will Stanza Desktop support eReader .pdb files?

I love the app on my iPhone and anxiously await the ability to read this format on my desktop.

One thing that would be cool too: the ability to sync annotations, bookmarks, highlights, page on which I left off, etc... between my iPhone and desktop versions of Stanza.

Thank you for such a fantastic application!!

Name Extension Read Support Read TOC Write Support Write TOC DRM Support
eReader .pdb Yes (iPhone/iPod only) Yes (iPhone/iPod only) No No Yes (iPhone/iPod only)

Fri, 09/11/2009 - 05:32 — macintyrej

desktop control

Having switched to an iphone the one thing I miss is Mobipocket reader desktop system with complete list of all books bought, ratings, and authors; and the ability to sort by author, title, rating etc. It's a great way to check on your views on previous books by the author before buying another book by that author.

It would be fantstic to have something like that in Stanza desktop.

Fri, 09/11/2009 - 05:52 — itimpi

Have you tried the Calibre

Have you tried the Calibre software - it a open-source product with just that type of capability.

Mon, 09/21/2009 - 01:42 — mores

Calibre

Calibre is very clumsy. It is a powerful conversion tool and I am impressed that it's cross-platform, but to manage an archive of books I'd like to see something like iTunes, or Bookpedia. I'm a mac user, after all ;)

I remember "complaining" about lost formating and missing images back when Stanza was still Beta 8 or Beta 9 ... now we're reaching Beta 18 and still no images, no bold, no italic.

I can assume that a lot of energy went into optimizing the iPhone app and adding the store etc. (which are awesome features, by the way). I'm just wondering, why Stanza for iPhone can read epubs properly when it' desktop sibling cannot.

Wed, 04/08/2009 - 03:48 — Adrian (not verified)

Stanza Desktop for MacOS

I really like this app, but there are just a couple of issues that prevent it from being my default e-reader.

Feature deficits:
- Formatting support! Why don't we have it?
- In vertical scroll mode, it would really help if I had the option of scrolling one column at a time.

Bugs:
- Doubleclicking on a word doesn't reliably select the entire word– perhaps the soft-hyphen issue?
- Why does the app make that loud, annoying beep every time I scroll? Even if it made a soft click, that would be fine...

At this point, I'm using Tofu as my e-book reader (despite the limited file-format support), but I am eager for Stanza to take the lead!

Mon, 04/06/2009 - 10:30 — Emily

Thanks for the feedback on

Thanks for the feedback on Stanza Desktop in Mac! We don't get a lot of it these days, so we appreciate it.

Mon, 04/06/2009 - 07:07 — Anonymous (not verified)

"Search in Google" glitch?

I came across Stanza while comparing ePub readers to use for a particular text I'd downloaded. (Nerd alert: The Education of Henry Adams)

One of the reasons I like Stanza is that the contextual menu on the Mac OS works - mostly - and this text is chock-full of references that send me scrambling to Wikipedia or other reference info.

The glitch is that extraneous spaces appear in the text I've highlighted to "Search in Google" when it gets transferred to the Google search. To a large extent it seems that some words get split at syllable breaks ... but not always. Of course, Google is very robust and often guesses right asking "Did you mean to search for xxxxxxx?" so this is not a huge issue. And of course, it could be just the particular text I'm reading.

But it would be nice if this feature behaved itself.

BTW, I am truly tickled and amazed at how much I'm getting from this particular text by reading it electronically with all the immediate access to cross-reference things. If I had read it 30 years ago - when I was supposed to in college - I would have gotten maybe 30% as much out of it.

Mon, 04/06/2009 - 10:20 — Emily

It's the soft hyphens (i.e.,

It's the soft hyphens (i.e., the hyphens that don't display unless you are at the end of a line) that are causing this. Thanks for pointing that out, since I thought we had changed that behavior a while ago. I'll look into it!