6 ms·

If it is that easy, there must be a business/political reason for not supporting it. Does anyone have a clue what that might be?

asdff 6y ago
Probably just as simple as a lack of willingness to put an engineer on the feature. Mozilla killed of the RSS reader in firefox for similar reasons.
- BlueTemplar 6y ago
  Sigh... Well, at least Thunderbird still has it !
ocdtrekkie 6y ago
I think it was probably a combination of low usage (because a lot of people either use Kindle or a DRM-encumbered EPUB platform like Adobe Digital Editions), and the fact that Microsoft likely was more concerned with prioritizing porting over other more critical functionality like Active Directory integration into the Chrome codebase. Presumably if Google decided to add EPUB support, Edge would get it back too, but Microsoft hasn't decided that feature is valuable enough to add onto their modifications.
- anoncow 6y ago
  Low usage is a chicken and egg thing.
  - ocdtrekkie 6y ago
    I agree, I am just speculating to why Microsoft did what it did. :) I also think it's particularly sad that Windows 10 had a perfectly good EPUB app, Reader, that Microsoft deprecated aggressively to force everyone to read eBooks in Edge... only to remove eBook support from Edge too.
- BlueTemplar 6y ago
  Sadly, these days html is drm-encumbered too : https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/09/open-letter-w3c-director-ceo-team-and-membership https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/09/open-letter-w3c-direct...
- rijoja 6y ago
  They don't support MathML which also is a part of the format apparently. I think Google dropped it presumably not to have to worry about securing the code base.
APhoenixRises 6y ago
My assumption was that it was a branch of functionality that could be dropped to make any maintenance of classic Edge easier. I was really irritated when they dropped support as epub support for Windows has been minimal until recently.
chocolatkey 6y ago
One of the reasons they couldn't just port it over is that it used some trident-specific CSS layouts to display the book pages. I remember extracting the JS/CSS they used and being very confused.
BiteCode_dev 6y ago
On the other hand, you can inline everything into an html page and just ask the browser to open that. An ebook, unzip, is rarely bigger than 1Mo, which is lower than what most page are today.
- ASalazarMX 6y ago
  > An ebook, unzip, is rarely bigger than 1Mo, which is lower than what most page are today. Oh no, we can't have that. Here are some "beautiful, performant and lightweight" Electron ePUB readers/organizers: https://www.electronjs.org/apps?q=epub https://www.electronjs.org/apps?q=epub
  - Turing_Machine 6y ago
    Here's an idea: Rather than complaining about the Electron apps, write better cross-platform apps that don't use Electron. I know it's fashionable to dog on Electron, but if it didn't fill a legitimate need, people wouldn't use it. It's easy to compare an Electron app, that actually exists, with some imaginary native app that doesn't. It's not so easy to find the budget and personnel to actually build dedicated apps for minority platforms. The choice generally isn't between "bloated Electron app" and "sleek native app". It's between "bloated Electron app" and "no app at all".
    - ASalazarMX 6y ago
      In the case of eBook readers, there's plenty of native software that fills that role in every platform, there's hardly a need for a cross-platform Electron ePUB reader. I suspect Electron frequently fills a need for the developers, instead of their users. It's easy to deploy, cross-platform and stable, I give you that, but the users pay for it with RAM, disk, CPU and energy. A single user might not mean much, but multiply that by the millions of Electron programs installed, that's the scale of lost resources that pay for the advantages of Electron.
      - Turing_Machine 6y ago
eurasiantiger 6y ago
Lack of DRM.

asdff 6y ago

Probably just as simple as a lack of willingness to put an engineer on the feature. Mozilla killed of the RSS reader in firefox for similar reasons.

BlueTemplar 6y ago
Sigh... Well, at least Thunderbird still has it !

ocdtrekkie 6y ago

I think it was probably a combination of low usage (because a lot of people either use Kindle or a DRM-encumbered EPUB platform like Adobe Digital Editions), and the fact that Microsoft likely was more concerned with prioritizing porting over other more critical functionality like Active Directory integration into the Chrome codebase. Presumably if Google decided to add EPUB support, Edge would get it back too, but Microsoft hasn't decided that feature is valuable enough to add onto their modifications.

anoncow 6y ago
Low usage is a chicken and egg thing.
- ocdtrekkie 6y ago
  I agree, I am just speculating to why Microsoft did what it did. :) I also think it's particularly sad that Windows 10 had a perfectly good EPUB app, Reader, that Microsoft deprecated aggressively to force everyone to read eBooks in Edge... only to remove eBook support from Edge too.
BlueTemplar 6y ago
Sadly, these days html is drm-encumbered too : https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/09/open-letter-w3c-director-ceo-team-and-membership https://www.eff.org/deeplinks/2017/09/open-letter-w3c-direct...
rijoja 6y ago
They don't support MathML which also is a part of the format apparently. I think Google dropped it presumably not to have to worry about securing the code base.

APhoenixRises 6y ago

My assumption was that it was a branch of functionality that could be dropped to make any maintenance of classic Edge easier. I was really irritated when they dropped support as epub support for Windows has been minimal until recently.

chocolatkey 6y ago

One of the reasons they couldn't just port it over is that it used some trident-specific CSS layouts to display the book pages. I remember extracting the JS/CSS they used and being very confused.

BiteCode_dev 6y ago

On the other hand, you can inline everything into an html page and just ask the browser to open that. An ebook, unzip, is rarely bigger than 1Mo, which is lower than what most page are today.

ASalazarMX 6y ago
> An ebook, unzip, is rarely bigger than 1Mo, which is lower than what most page are today. Oh no, we can't have that. Here are some "beautiful, performant and lightweight" Electron ePUB readers/organizers: https://www.electronjs.org/apps?q=epub https://www.electronjs.org/apps?q=epub
- Turing_Machine 6y ago
  Here's an idea: Rather than complaining about the Electron apps, write better cross-platform apps that don't use Electron. I know it's fashionable to dog on Electron, but if it didn't fill a legitimate need, people wouldn't use it. It's easy to compare an Electron app, that actually exists, with some imaginary native app that doesn't. It's not so easy to find the budget and personnel to actually build dedicated apps for minority platforms. The choice generally isn't between "bloated Electron app" and "sleek native app". It's between "bloated Electron app" and "no app at all".
  - ASalazarMX 6y ago
    In the case of eBook readers, there's plenty of native software that fills that role in every platform, there's hardly a need for a cross-platform Electron ePUB reader. I suspect Electron frequently fills a need for the developers, instead of their users. It's easy to deploy, cross-platform and stable, I give you that, but the users pay for it with RAM, disk, CPU and energy. A single user might not mean much, but multiply that by the millions of Electron programs installed, that's the scale of lost resources that pay for the advantages of Electron.
    - Turing_Machine 6y ago

eurasiantiger 6y ago

Lack of DRM.