Downloads

  • VoyBook (zip file contains index.html and menu.html)

About VoyBook

VoyBook is a browser-based ebook reader for the Voyager phone. VoyBook allows you to use the Voyager’s web browser to read and navigate ebook documents that have been converted to graphic images.

When you first open VoyBook on your phone’s browser, you’ll be taken to the menu screen:

Here you enter the name of the ebook you want to read, together with the start page. For example, if you have an ebook called “alice” and you want to start reading at page 24 ...

you simply enter the information, and then press “Start Reader” to open the book in the viewing screen:

Navigating the book is easy. To “turn the page” forward or back you can either (a) tap on the left or right side of the screen, or (b) press and flick the screen left or right (similar to coverflow navigation).

Pressing the “Menu” option at the top of the reader screen will return you to the menu, where you can enter a new page number (fastest way to make large jumps through the book), or open a new book.

When you’re done reading, VoyBook saves your place. When you next restart VoyBook, you’ll automatically jump to the last page your were reading when you previously stopped. Also, if you take a phone call while reading, you’ll automatically be taken back to your place in VoyBook once the call has ended.

Limited Testing Version

For normal use, you must download VoyBook and set it up on your own web server or hosting service as described below. If you simply want to see VoyBook in action, you can try the limited testing version available on this site. From your Voyager's web browser, choose "WWW" or "Go to WWW" and enter the following address: http://voybook.googlepages.com/voybook.html. The limited testing version is limited to one ebook ("Alice's Adventures in Wonderland" called "alice" for VoyBook's purposes), and only displays pages one through nine.

Finding ebooks

Once you have the VoyBook files, you’ll need one or more ebooks to convert. Just about any txt, html, or pdf file will work. I strongly recommend that you rename your ebook to something short before converting it to images, e.g., call it “alice.txt” instead of “Alice's_Adventures_ in_Wonderland__by_Lewis _Carroll.txt” or the like. It will save you a lot of typing later. To get help folks started, you can download the aforementioned “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland” on the VoyBook home page, or head to the Project Gutenberg site (http://www.gutenberg.org/wiki/Main_Page) and choose from any of their 20,000 title collection of free ebooks.

Converting ebooks to Images

In order to use VoyBook, you’ll need to convert your ebook into a series of images. There are a number of programs capable of automating this task, but VoyBook is tailored for a program called “eBook to Images” -- a free program available for download at http://www.merlinsoftware.com/ebook. The “eBook to Images” program will convert txt, html, lit, pdf and doc files, and unless you have a good reason to choose another program, I highly recommend it.

To use the program, first select “Open eBook” at the bottom and open your source file. Then change both preset options to “Custom.”Set the “Screen Width” to 398 and the “Screen Height” to 172, and choose “JPG” as the “Image Type.”

On the “Image” options tab, you may select “Anti-Aliasing” if you prefer (check the in-program preview with and without to decide) and you may select any “JPEG Quality.” However, I have found that a “JPEG Quality” in the range of 75% strikes a good balance between text clarity and file size.

On the “Font” options tab, you may select any font, font size and colors that you prefer. Larger font sizes may be easier to read, but will result in more pages once the file is converted to images.

On the “Output” options tab, select “All” for the “In Each Folder” option. This will result in all the image files being created in one folder, which is what VoyBook expects.

If you want to mess with other options, or if you want to use a different program to convert your ebooks to images, feel free. However, VoyBook requires three things from your ebook image files:

  1. They must be 398 x 172 jpeg images.

  2. They must be named in the format “book 0000.jpg” where “book” is the name of your ebook (e.g., “alice,” “harrypotter1,” or whatever), followed by a space, followed a four-digit sequentially numbered series from 0001 up to a maximum of 9999.

  3. They must be located in a folder called “book” (or “alice” or “harrypotter1” or whatever), i.e., the name of the folder and the name used in the files must match.

If you use the “eBook to Images” program, once you’ve set the options as described above, simply press the “Convert to Images” button and after a few moments you’ll have a folder on your Desktop with all your images. So, if your original file was named “alice.txt” you’ll find a folder on your Desktop named “alice” and inside will be “alice 0001.jpg,” “alice 0002.jpg,” etc. up to “alice 0326.jpg” (or thereabouts, depending on your font options).

Hosting the Files

Now the hard part. You need to put the two VoyBook files (“index.html” and “menu.html”) onto a web server along with book folder and all its images. There is no known way for the browser to access files on the phone or on a SD card, so the only way to view an ebook is over the internet.

If you can host your own web server, or if you have hosting services that you can upload to using ftp, then this will be a breeze. Just copy or ftp the VoyBook files and the image folder onto your server, and you should be set.Point your Voyager’s browser to the “index.html” file and VoyBook will be off and running.

However, if you don’t have a web server locally or remotely available with ftp, I don’t have any good alternatives right now. Googlepages, which I’ve recommended for other projects, really isn’t feasible here because they don’t allow folders, but more importantly because you’d have to manually upload every single image file individually using their (somewhat slow and clunky) web interface.If someone has suggestions for a free web hosting service that has ftp access or batch uploading, please feel free to contribute.

Also, be sure you you’ve got free data before tearing through ebooks. Our example book, “Alice in Wonderland,” weighs in at around 6MB using the settings described above.While its certainly not an excessive amount of data, just be aware. On the plus side, VoyBook downloads only the page you are viewing, plus it preloads one page behind and two pages ahead. This keeps data use low, while still eliminating most of the transmission delay when you turn pages.

Please Contribute Your Ideas

I know this isn’t a perfect or even easy way to implement an ebook reader. It’s the best I can come up with for now, given the limitations of the phone. Hopefully some of you will find this useful, and hopefully some of you will give me some ideas to make the program even better.