Some users reported an encoding-related issue with version 2.4.
If you are experiencing “Error opening book” or your book shows up with unreadable characters, please go to Preferences->Preferred Encoding and choose “ASCII”.
Thank you.
BookZ has been tested to work with iPhone OS 2.2.
I haven’t noticed any significant difference, but some changes are obvious:
The new iTunes.app allows downloading Podcast episode IN THE BACKGROUND!
When deleting an app, user will be asked to rate that app.
Street view is cool, but not as cool as in Android : |
0. Download HFS~HTTP File Server here (green software: free and portable).
1. Run hfs.exe (The usage is very straightforward. You could find more information on HFS website)
2. In the HFS interface, drag and drop text files into the left pane.
3. In BookZ, “Utilities->Surf and Download a Book”. Put the host address into the URL field and you are good to go!
P.S.: If BookZ cannot load the page, please check your firewall settings ; )
Roger has made a grand discovery that HFS~HTTP File Server works wonderfully with BookZ!
What is HFS~HTTP Server?
HFS~HTTP Server is a green (free and portable) file server that runs on Windows.
It is available at http://www.rejetto.com/hfs/
Setting up is super easy: just drag & drop a local .txt book into the software and you could download the book with BookZ!
I shall write a detailed step-by-step tutorial when I have access to a Windows box 
The iPhone OS 2.0.1 update works fine on my iPhone/iPod Touch. After undating, BookZ works as expected without losing any information.
Before upgrading, it is highly advisable to BACKUP your iPhone/iPod Touch just in case.
What if…the update fails to work in my case?
You could always “Restore” your iPhone/iPod Touch
and then “Restore from Backup”
If you have any questions, feel free to use the “Support” or “Forum” tab on the top navigation bar and I will try to help as much as possible 
Please note: It is very important to close any opened text file, go back to the library view before upgrading.
0. The update is free for existing BookZ users!
To download/redownload the update, you need to click “Buy” and iTunes will remind you this update is free.
1. Before upgrading
- Quit the reading interface and get to the library view before upgrading. (Very Important)
- Connect to iTunes, do a backup.
- Note down any important bookmarks. For example, there is an important bookmark at 10% of the book within the paragraph “Doooooog blah blah blah”, you need to note down “Doooooog” (10%). In case the upgrade fails, you could always know where you were in a book.
- Updating with iTunes is preferred as updating via WIFI sometimes corrupts the binary.
2. Important tips/tricks in the new version
- Encoding settings: You could load text files encoded in Latin, Greek, Russian (Cyrillic), Chinese (GB18030, BIG5), Japanese (S-JIS, Japanese(EUC), Jap ISO2022) and lots of other encodings.
- Google Pages now work with BookZ. You could upload any text files to Google Pages(free!) and download them with BookZ. Notice that text files must end with “.txt” in order to be recognized.
- You could now edit book names by tapping the little blue arrow to the right of a title in the library view.
- Web view now supports bookmarks! It will automatically load the first item in your bookmark list.
3. Highlights in this version
- Integration with the Project Gutenberg: Give BookZ a title and it could find the book for you in the Project Gutenberg–all in the iPhone-ish way!
- Download Center automates book downloading for you
- 20+ encodings supported
- Lots of adjustment for user-friendliness
- Significant stability improvement
4. Why is the “+” button in the library view gone?
Because looking into other’s territory is not allowed ; )
5. Why is my existing library gone?
Application data is managed by iTunes. Unchecking BookZ and “Apply” in iTunes will result in all books being wiped out.
6. Oops, my upgrade was not successful…
The issue: a text file was opened before the upgrade process and thus the data was broken.
The fix: If you have backed up your iPhone/iPod Touch before upgrading, you could restore, close any file opened by BookZ and re-upgrade. Without a backup, the only way is to perform a clean install of BookZ.
If your Mac connects to the Internet via a WIFI router, click here for a simpler version of this tutorial.
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Step-by-step guide You only need to set up once following this guide.
1. Go to your home folder in Finder. In my case, it is “steven” with a house icon, right below “Applications” in the left pane.
2. Enter the folder called “Sites”.
3. Make a directory in “Sites” called BookZ
4. Enter the directory “bookz”, drop some txt files you want to read into this directory.
5. (CMD)-SPACE to bring up Spotlight. Enter “Web Sharing” and click enter.
6. Within “Sharing”, tick the “Web Sharing” option
7. Select the “Internet Sharing” item (not the checkbox), select “Airport” item (not the checkbox), and click “Airport Options” below.
8. Enter a name for your local network, in my case “MB”
9. Check “Internet Sharing” to enable WIFI connection between your iPhone/iPod Touch and your Mac.
10. On the iPhone/iPod Touch, connect to the WIFI network you just established (”MB” in my case).
Click the right blue arrow to the right of the network name to get the Router address (10.0.2.1 in my case)
11. Fire up BookZ, use the “Web” tab, go to “10.0.2.1/~username/bookz” (repleace “username” with your Mac username, “steven” in my case). Tip: If the “~”sign doesn’t show when typing symbols, try the “Shift” key. Replace “10.0.2.1″ with your own router address obtained in the previous step.
12. This page correspondes to your “~/Sites/bookz” folder on your Mac. Click on the “.txt” files to import books into BookZ.
For subsequent imports, just drop the txt book into “~/Sites/bookz” folder, open BookZ and go to “10.0.2.1/~*username*/bookz”. (Replace “10.0.2.1″ with your own router address obtained in step 10)
Note: If you get “403 Error” instead of anything useful, please check out Apple’s official solution.
Please remember to turn off “Web Sharing” and “Internet Sharing” (otherwise people will be able to access your internet connection and see what’s under your “~/Sites” folder). You just need to turn them back on when importing books.
Features
- Supports unlimited bookmarks
- Smart layout enhancement eliminates unnecessary linefeeds
- Remembers where you was for every book
- Customizable background image/pattern allows you to read with style.
- Optimized for big files. BookZ is simple and fast.
- Integrated browser enables you to surf the Internet. When a link to a txt file is clicked, BookZ automatically downloads the book and makes it ready to be read!
- Fanciful page flip animations make reading a real pleasure.
Supports multiple fonts and font sizes.
- Customizable margins.
- Text/Background colors can be changed.
- Landscape mode for wider view.
- With integrated “Find” and “Quick Jump”, you can navigate to any part of the book with ease.
Exciting feature in the next release:
Search and download Project Gutenberg free eBooks right within BookZ!
- Menu-Select All (in any text source)
- Copy the Text
- Paste it into TextEdit
- Menu-Make Plain Text
- Save As (use UTF-8 encoding)
And done! I always use this method to produce TXT files and it works very well with BookZ : )
If you have enough bandwidth, you could watch the video workflow (same content as above)
This demo is done with BookZ 1.0.2.
The 1.0.2 update is waiting for approval in iTunes Connect.
Quicktime is needed to watch this demo. Click the link below to view it in browser.
Alternatively, you could right click on the link and download it to your hard drive.