Firefox EPUB Reader -- Read EPUB Books in Firefox
EPUB is a standard format for ebooks used by many programs and devices (like the Barnes & Noble NOOK). There are millions of books available in epub format -- many of them free from Google Books, Project Gutenburg, and many other locations. Until now you had to download them and read them in a special program. If you have an ebook reader, this probably is not an issue as you probably want to transfer the epub file to your ebook reader so you would have to download it. However if you are going to be reading the ebook on your computer, it would be nice to be able to read it in your browser like you can PDF files. If you use Firefox (version 3 or 4) and install the EPUBReader extension.
From the EPUBReader website:
EPUBReader is a Firefox addon which lets you read ePub-files just in the browser. You don't need to install additional software!
If you click on a link to an ePub-file, you are normally prompted by the Firefox "save as" dialog. With EPUBReader installed, the ePub-file is downloaded, processed and directly displayed ready to read.
It runs on every operating system Firefox does (Windows, MacOS X, Linux).
EPUBReader is available in 23 different languages: Catalan, Danish, Dutch, English, Esperanto, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian, Japanese, Lithuanian, Polish, Portuguese (Brazilian), Portuguese (European), Russian, Simplified Chinese, Spanish, Swedish, Traditional Chinese, Turkish.
I'll be honest. I strongly prefer to read my epub ebooks on a NOOK. However, for quickly looking at epub ebooks on my computer, I find the ability to click on a link to one in Firefox and have it download and display in my browser immediately to downloading the file and having to fire up the Windows NOOK software to read it. Even if you access your epub files on an o2 iPad, knowing you can just read via your browser interface is a major time-saver. However, if you don't have an ebook reader able to handle epub files, you can even use EPUBReader as your main ebook reader. It will be happy to open and allow you to read all the epub files you've downloaded -- it even maintains a nice catalog of your epub ebooks to select from.
Rating: 4.0
Operating System: Firefox 3-4 on Linux, Mac, or Windows
License: Freeware
Price: Free
Version Tested: 1.4.1.0
Web Site: http://www.epubread.com/
