I kindly ask you to inform me if premium membership supports also Kindle format like . MOBI format?
It is very hard to read online without Amazon Kindle support or at least .EPUB format. Is this technically possible?
If I understand the current Kindle formats (AZW3, KF8, and KFX) are based on MOBI and is a proprietary format exclusively used on Kindle devices but we can still send them to Kindle devices.
I have asked someone from SitePoint HQ to answer @toplisek.
Hi,
Nope sorry we do not offer the books in this format. The books can only be read using our online reader this is part of our licencing deals with our partners. Thanks for being a member of our site.
Thanks.
Thank you for the message!
Is it possible to install Google Android app like Sitepoint and Google play and read?
Hey,
So we don’t have an app on the store but our web page will work offline and let you add to home screen on android. You could then use the app when offline if you have hit the offline button for any books. You can then read wherever you are without the need for internet access.
Cheers.
I have to say, I’m disappointed so far. Signed up this morning and quickly found out that “Download to your computer, phone or tablet” only means make the page available offline. Trying to read a book this way is frustrating. If I forget to bookmark a spot and come back later, the page has refreshed and I’m back to the top. I would take a refund if it were available.
Hi,
Sorry to hear you not having a good time with the product. Interesting it should take you back to where you were last. Was this while you were offline or online?
If you are unhappy and want to get a refund that won’t be an issue I will alert our support team to this post and get them to take it up with you.
Thank you.
Thank you for the message! I like Sitepoint resources many years and bought a lot of books. It is good for visitors, to move further with the content and reading is just one communication which we all benefit.
Maybe I’m doing something wrong. I do all my digital reading on my iPad. When I go to the Library on sitepoint I can select a book to open it and click on “Make Available Offline” and it does something but I’m still looking at a web page. Is there a different way I should be opening it, a different viewer? Maybe another browser instead of Safari? How is it supposed to work? How are others able to read the books and go to where they were last reading? I’m willing to keep trying.
Hi Brent,
Nope that is all you need to do. What that does is downloads the entire book into offline storage. You could then go on and do the same for other books. If you come back then one day offline and go to SitePoint.com/premium any book you made available offline will show up and you should be able to open them and continue reading where you were.
As for it continue from where you were last reading the app should always remember this without any action from you. I will test this today and get back to you on this as it could be an issue with the iPad and how that works so let me test and confirm that.
Thank you.
Another thing I’m noticing, sometimes when I come back to a book and start scrolling the text will jump around vertically. I captured a video of it but can’t upload it here. Do you have a support feedback email I can send it to?
Done
Hi, I just saw this dialog going back and forth and feel encouraged to put in my two cents.
Honestly, I am quite disappointed with the so-called offline availability of books. This worked fantastically when we could download, it hasn’t worked for me once the new way. No, I am not disappointed enough to ask for a refund. I think you do wonderful work (and you seem to be the nicest people in tech) but the offline availability just doesn’t work for me.
As a technical person, I would like to know how this offline availability is supposed to work. An illustrated how-to guide (step by step instructions with checks to confirm that the desired action has been performed) for the various operating systems would be nice. I would also like to know where, exactly, the data files are being created on my device (I use a Windows 10 laptop, an iPad/iPhone, and an Android phone) rather than leaving this a mystery. I imagine most people don’t like to have something installed on their device without knowing what it is and where it goes. I would at least be able to confirm that the files have indeed been downloaded. Just as an example, when you click on make this file available offline, there is, after a sort while, a message that the the file has been downloaded. Then, if I do the same thing again, it gives me the same message. Apparently it doesn’t know that the files have been downloaded already once, or they disappear from the device for some reason. And how does the offline reader (does it have a name?) access these files?
And going to SitePoint.com/premium offline, like you suggested above, does not work. It just tells me that I don’t have an internet connection and stops there. It does not show me anything regarding downloaded books.
Maybe there is something missing in the instructions or maybe I just don’t know how to follow something that should be simple. Also, as a subscriber for more than two years already I understood that I should still be able to download certain titles, but it is not clear which ones, or how to find them (like, is there an area of the library that contains only downloadable titles?)
Overall, I would prefer a smaller selection of titles with an ability to download them than a rather unlimited selection of titles that I cannot read offline.
I appreciate the chance to voice my opinion in this forum and would be interested in hearing more from other subscribers regarding the subject of offline availability. Thank you!
Hi,
Thanks for the feedback I will pass this all on.
As for offline mode we are making use of features built into the web browser that allows a website to function offline and work like an app. Effectively when you hit the offline button it does not download a file in the way it would if you were downloading a PDF. When you hit the offline button it gets all the JSON data for the entire book and we store this in indexedDB. You can read about that in a book we offer: https://www.sitepoint.com/premium/books/going-offline/read/8
Another way to get to a downloaded book is to just go back direct to the read URL for the book or even save it to homepage if using mobile as then if offline you should be able to go direct into that book and start reading and if done direct from the book when you add to homepage it will even save the cover of the book as the image.
I totally agree with you that our offline experience at current is not great as it is confusing and can have issues this is something we are investigating at current. We are about to release a new dashboard that should help improve this offline experience however it won’t solve all the issues above. We are still also working on how we can do it better overall for users.
In relation to what books you can download if you plan is one of the older plans that allows downloads then yes some of our older books can be downloaded. These would only be SitePoint published books and only older titles none of the new ones were set for download.
Thanks again for the feedback.
Thanks. Yes that does seem like a strange issue. I have passed this onto the team to look into. Thanks for the video.
Thanks again for this. I have been able to replicate it and we will have the team working on this iPad issues this week. Very sorry for the delay in getting this looked at and solved it is a bit of a strange one.
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