ShelfServer can now convert ePub books into a format readable by BookShelf. ePub support is still basic and preliminary, but I invite comments and suggestions in the forums.

If any books render badly or incompletely, please include post (or email me) a link to the book in question, and I'll do my best to get it working.

BookShelf 2.0.1738 submitted to Apple this afternoon includes minor bug fixes in the details screen and bookmarklet based downloads. All known iPhone 3.0 beta issues are resolved in this release.

Released along side was the same version of BookShelf LT which brings FeedBooks support and many other 2.0 features to the ad-supported BookShelf LT for the first time.

BookShelf recently got newspaper coverage in New Zealand where is will be used to display multimedia course material for college courses at Wintec.

Support may be somewhat delayed in the coming weeks as I'm in the process of moving my home. I'll still be reading and responding to email as quickly as I can, but please bear with me if things are somewhat delayed.

Version 1.3 is available in the AppStore now. Fixes include improved reading stability and more accurate rendering of Plucker files.

Apologies all, for the lousy web service the past few days! The filesystem on my webserver suffered some rather serious corruption Sunday (05-Oct-2008) morning, and I've been scrambling to piece everything back together since then.

As of the very early morning of Wednesday, 08-Oct-2008, I have most things back in place in a newly built server in a new location. I've upgraded from VMWare based hosting to a full dedicated server thanks to MacMiniColo.net. So far everything seems to be working fairly well. It's actually been a learning experience getting things like PHP and mod_python working well on a Mac server. I usually host on Linux...

At this point, the Trac system I use for bugs is still read-only. I need to get logins working on that, and it should be back. The forums are running and should be full read/write. Lastly, the Java based bits (ShelfServer and upload interface for it) are currently out. I still need to outsmart the Tomcat instance in Mac OS. That should hopefully happen later this morning after a bit of sleep.

Submitted to Apple at 13:30 EDT on 17-Sep-2008. No idea when it'll be in the AppStore, but as always, it's a free update when it finally does land.

Many thanks to my team of dedicated beta testers! This release is undoubted much improved because of your input.

New Features

Bug fixes

WebScription.net and the Baen Free Library are now available directly from BookShelf -- no computer required!

ShelfServer has been updated with a number of bug fixes and new features.

ShelfServer supports the following new formats: MHT, RTF, CHM, MS Word DOC, ZIP Archives

Note that for DOC, files in Word 95 or older are not supported. The newer DOCX is also unsupported at this time. DOC files will be converted to plain text, so all formatting will be lost.

Support for ZIP is a bit clunky at this point, but it seems to work reasonably well. Folder structures inside ZIP files are flattened, but supported file formats are correctly extracted.

This version should be automatically pushed the next time you WebStart ShelfServer.

Just a quick update as many have asked. Version 1.1 of BookShelf was submitted to Apple on the morning of July 15th. It's been listed as "In review" status since then. My emails to Apple have received either a tracking number or no response at all. I have no idea when 1.1 will be released by Apple.

Sorry that I don't have more useful information on this. The AppStore experience has been incredibly frustrating so far.

A demo version of BookShelf has been uploaded to Apple under the name BookShelfLT. Once approved, it will be a free download in the AppStore. LT limits you to only three books at a time on your device, but it's otherwise feature identical to the full version of BookShelf. If you're unsure if BookShelf will meet your needs, please give BookShelfLT a try and see for yourself.

This update to ShelfServer resolves several bugs and improves conversion for text and html files in several cases. See More Info link for full list of fixed bugs.

Notable improvements include proper handling of Mac OS Classic style text files (CR only line endings), better handling of text files with hard line wrapping, and improved cleansing of HTML to remove JavaScript and fix pre tags.

This update should automatically load when you WebStart ShelfServer. You'll be able to tell you have the new version by the new version number displayed in the lower left of the window. This version will improve the reading experience even on the 1.0 version of BookShelf, but you'll need to re-download any books to see the difference.