Question about Google books.

E_man

Well-known member
Jul 16, 2010
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Can you sideload books into the app, or does it only show books you buy through the application itself? The app looks awesome, but that is a critical feature for me. Been wondering since they showed it off at CES.

Sent from my phone. Ignore the typos.
 
it depends where the content is stored. it's an epub reader, so I'd assume it would work.

If you have a phone, try doing this with your phone (google books is a free download) see where it stores content and try loading your own books into that folder. If it works, it will work on the Xoom. If not, there are free open source ereaders out there that do allow sideloading (like Aldiko)
 
I never could with the phone version. I'd like someone with an actual XOOM to try it. The UI looks much better than aldiko, but that's what I use now.
 
I've been using the Kindle app for a while now and that's where all my money is. I really want Amazon to update the app to look like Google Books as it is an astonishingly beautiful app. Kindle works, but it's just a big version of the original app.
 
I have been trying and not figured it out yet. I have said it elsewhere. That is maybe the one thing I really like about the ipad. I can load pdf manuals and my own content and have it show up in iBooks. Even create different bookshelves to sort things. One of the things I really wanted to do is load PDF of the technical manuals I need and have them portable.

I have tried various PDF readers, etc and none are really good. Still looking.
 
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Yeah, iBooks is the type of thing I'm looking for. I would hope that google was smart and added that feature.
 
I have been trying and not figured it out yet. I have said it elsewhere. That is maybe the one thing I really like about the ipad. I can load pdf manuals and my own content and have it show up in iBooks. Even create different bookshelves to sort things. One of the things I really wanted to do is load PDF of the technical manuals I need and have them portable.

I have tried various PDF readers, etc and none are really good. Still looking.
A the Adobe reader works well on the Xoom. I have an entire library of technical PDFs I access from the Xoom.
 
A the Adobe reader works well on the Xoom. I have an entire library of technical PDFs I access from the Xoom.

It is not a question of will the books work on the Xoom. Of course they do. Rather more the organization, etc. I would much rather have the books separated than all co-mingled. It is aesthetics versus functionality.
 
It is not a question of will the books work on the Xoom. Of course they do. Rather more the organization, etc. I would much rather have the books separated than all co-mingled. It is aesthetics versus functionality.
I did say "library", right? :)

Meaning: My PDFs are organized. I added a folder named "My PDFs" under my SDCard folder, and in this PDF folder I have multiple subfolders. Each of these subfolders is a bookshelf: One for Oracle, one for Rational, one for Business Objects, one for Product Manuals, etc. When I open Adobe PDF Reader, it lists the available PDFs within their directory folder structure, so everything is organized.

It can be improved, of course, because my biggest issue with Adobe PDF Reader is you can't set bookmarks to recall your last place visited within a title. Hopefully a new Honeycomb version of the reader is being developed to address this shortcoming...
 
For pdf I'd recommend ezPDF, $1.99. I had it on galaxy tab, now on xoom. It remembers your location, automatically removes margins, has few other good features, including nice animation similar to iBooks. It also only shows folders with pdf.

Sent from my Xoom using Tapatalk
 
I was playing around with the Aldiko book app today to see how it handled PDF, and I have to say I liked that you could create custom collections within the app for your PDF docs. It also preserves your last-read location, which is nice - it allows you to bounce between books/PDFs and pick-up where you left off. The only complaint I had was that it was slow to load the PDFs and flip pages... otherwise, it's a fairly nice PDF reader.