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Hi HN! Meet Bubblin Superbooks, a social book reader for web. It's _iPad first_ and all the books (mostly public domain samples) work offline too using a servi

Hi HN! Meet Bubblin Superbooks, a social book reader for web. It's _iPad first_ and all the books (mostly public domain samples) work offline too using a service worker. Hope you like it! :-) Good/bad, all feedback is very welcome!

Semaphor 8y ago
I see bandcamp as a store where the fees for the artists are straightforward, the barrier of entry is low, the artists can set the price themselves and the user has format options. I didn't even know it had any real social features. So to me, the headline chosen here is very misleading.
- sonicaa 8y ago
  > I didn't even know it had any real social features. hi, Sonica Arora, CTO of Bubblin here. social is very critical to books, though I agree with you that with Bandcamp and in general with music it isn't so much. our store fees, transactions and writer-reader sale stuff and options will be just as transparent and simple as it is for Bandcamp. thanks for sharing your views!
chrisco255 8y ago
I like the idea. The site is well-done and I'll definitely revisit...however...I wanted to ask about some of the comments in the FAQ, specifically: > Files are about encoding those rotten ideals and force > them on the society. > So why should e-books be files at all? Well, without some kind of common format, you would need a browser always in order to reliably view a book. Browsers are pretty awful on e-readers...so you're basically forced to read a book from your phone or tablet through a browser with this concept. Another problem is that unless the books are embeddable HTML, it's easy to imagine that your Bubblin formatting would not work well if I try to self-publish to say, my personal blog. So am I not just trading one proprietary file format for proprietary HTML/CSS/JS markup? I like the vision. E-books can be so much more than they currently are and it would be neat to see more rich visualization and interactivity inside of reading experiences.
- marvindanig 8y ago
  > …unless the books are embeddable HTML, it's easy to imagine that your Bubblin formatting would not work well if I try to self-publish to say, my personal blog. So am I not just trading one proprietary file format for proprietary HTML/CSS/JS markup? That is correct. At a very high-level we'd ultimately need to spec out a web standard to support books natively on web to avoid one proprietary format from another; like the video tag perhaps. For now (though it is still unfinished, raw and very very early) we have a sister project called Bookiza.js [0] that let's you publish a Superbook on your own website using markdown or haml. :-) [0] https://bookiza.io https://bookiza.io
darrenf 8y ago
I browsed through a book, really enjoying the interface - though I hit an issue here: https://bubblin.io/book/the-solar-system-by-marvin-danig/22 https://bubblin.io/book/the-solar-system-by-marvin-danig/22 The right hand page (leaf?) says "Your browser does not seem to support WebGL. Find out how to get it here.". The error message is impossible to select and copy; it links to https://get.webgl.org/ https://get.webgl.org/ which tells me my browser does support WebGL, showing the spinning cube. Also, entering reader mode unexpectedly (ironically?) shows only a set of keyboard shortcuts, and this despite having no keyboard connected. Using Brave on an iPad Pro.
- darrenf 8y ago
  Then this happened 4 pages later: https://www.dropbox.com/s/xfs8zxrl0kj8r89/Photo%2018-12-2018%2C%2006%2053%2058.jpg?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/xfs8zxrl0kj8r89/Photo%2018-12-2018...
  - marvindanig 8y ago
    1. Thanks! And yes, I'm aware of these issues pertaining to touch surfaces with/without keyboard and also on browsers that return isTouch true falsely on some machines running on Windows & Chromebook. Our next iteration of Bookiza early next year will solve all of these edge cases gracefully. 2. That book on Solar System is an extreme example. I'm loading the heaviest MathJax library on that page to render simple math formula. Katex would suffice there and the bug would be gone. :-)
dsaw 8y ago
Hi marvindanig, great product, loved the YC application – very pleased to see that you haven't changed over the years, and are still creating!

Semaphor 8y ago

I see bandcamp as a store where the fees for the artists are straightforward, the barrier of entry is low, the artists can set the price themselves and the user has format options. I didn't even know it had any real social features. So to me, the headline chosen here is very misleading.

sonicaa 8y ago
> I didn't even know it had any real social features. hi, Sonica Arora, CTO of Bubblin here. social is very critical to books, though I agree with you that with Bandcamp and in general with music it isn't so much. our store fees, transactions and writer-reader sale stuff and options will be just as transparent and simple as it is for Bandcamp. thanks for sharing your views!

chrisco255 8y ago

I like the idea. The site is well-done and I'll definitely revisit...however...I wanted to ask about some of the comments in the FAQ, specifically: > Files are about encoding those rotten ideals and force > them on the society. > So why should e-books be files at all? Well, without some kind of common format, you would need a browser always in order to reliably view a book. Browsers are pretty awful on e-readers...so you're basically forced to read a book from your phone or tablet through a browser with this concept. Another problem is that unless the books are embeddable HTML, it's easy to imagine that your Bubblin formatting would not work well if I try to self-publish to say, my personal blog. So am I not just trading one proprietary file format for proprietary HTML/CSS/JS markup? I like the vision. E-books can be so much more than they currently are and it would be neat to see more rich visualization and interactivity inside of reading experiences.

marvindanig 8y ago
> …unless the books are embeddable HTML, it's easy to imagine that your Bubblin formatting would not work well if I try to self-publish to say, my personal blog. So am I not just trading one proprietary file format for proprietary HTML/CSS/JS markup? That is correct. At a very high-level we'd ultimately need to spec out a web standard to support books natively on web to avoid one proprietary format from another; like the video tag perhaps. For now (though it is still unfinished, raw and very very early) we have a sister project called Bookiza.js [0] that let's you publish a Superbook on your own website using markdown or haml. :-) [0] https://bookiza.io https://bookiza.io

darrenf 8y ago

I browsed through a book, really enjoying the interface - though I hit an issue here: https://bubblin.io/book/the-solar-system-by-marvin-danig/22 https://bubblin.io/book/the-solar-system-by-marvin-danig/22 The right hand page (leaf?) says "Your browser does not seem to support WebGL. Find out how to get it here.". The error message is impossible to select and copy; it links to https://get.webgl.org/ https://get.webgl.org/ which tells me my browser does support WebGL, showing the spinning cube. Also, entering reader mode unexpectedly (ironically?) shows only a set of keyboard shortcuts, and this despite having no keyboard connected. Using Brave on an iPad Pro.

darrenf 8y ago
Then this happened 4 pages later: https://www.dropbox.com/s/xfs8zxrl0kj8r89/Photo%2018-12-2018%2C%2006%2053%2058.jpg?dl=0 https://www.dropbox.com/s/xfs8zxrl0kj8r89/Photo%2018-12-2018...
- marvindanig 8y ago
  1. Thanks! And yes, I'm aware of these issues pertaining to touch surfaces with/without keyboard and also on browsers that return isTouch true falsely on some machines running on Windows & Chromebook. Our next iteration of Bookiza early next year will solve all of these edge cases gracefully. 2. That book on Solar System is an extreme example. I'm loading the heaviest MathJax library on that page to render simple math formula. Katex would suffice there and the bug would be gone. :-)

dsaw 8y ago

Hi marvindanig, great product, loved the YC application – very pleased to see that you haven't changed over the years, and are still creating!