anyone interested in tire-kicking Edge EPUB support w/ EPUBTest?

[Bill McCoy]

Hi EPUB WG folks,

Microsoft has recently released a beta of EPUB support in Edge browser as part of the overall beta of the "Creators Update for Windows".  A Microsoft person indicated they are implementing EPUB 3.1 which if true would be amazing. But it wasn't someone directly in that team so we don't know for sure and "implementing" doesn't necessarily mean "implemented in this initial beta". So we'd like to figure out ASAP what is their current status of EPUB feature support so if anyone would like to jump in and help do a test run that's be much appreciated. It would require your having Windows 10, being willing to install said "Creators Update" beta, and being able or willing to figure out how to run the EPUB 3 test suite and report the results (see epubtest.org). 

Please contact me if interested.

BTW on a more general note the epubtest team (which has been a collaborative effort sponsored by DAISY, BISG, and IDPF) could use some help on a variety of front. BISG is leading the charge on that and probably Bill Kasdorf (cc:ed) is your best contact on that (and I also cc: Brian O'Leary of BISG).

If appropriate we'd like to feature Edge EPUB support on epubzone.org or elsewhere. Not to suggest that dedicated reading apps are not critical but Windows / one of the 4 prevalent web browsers natively support EPUB 3 is a big deal. A really big deal. 

So besides the formal test results (which may or may not make sense to publicly report at this early stage) if anyone wants to do any subjective evaluation and possibly blog or write an article about it, great.

Thanks!

--Bill

[ro...@outlook.com]

I have been trying out various EPUB files in the Edge browser since the beta dropped in November. The latest build 15014 adds a bookstore if your region is set to the US. 

In order to play with EPUB in Edge you need to be running the Insider builds of Windows 10, so not recommended for your main machine since this is beta software. It is easy to switch to the Insider programme, but you can't simply revert to the production build.

I have found the experience is pretty OK, and there are some nice touches to the EPUB reading experience. For a first version, it is good to see choices of font style, page theme, bookmarks, quite nice table of contents, and even options for text spacing. So it is certainly worth a look.

Since I am all set up on a couple of machines, I'd be happy to help in the tire kicking effort.

"willing to figure out how to run the EPUB 3 test suite"

You can open an EPUB file with "Open with" and I have Edge configured as my default programme for EPUB files. I can confirm that I can open the EPUB 3 test suite files without any problems.

I have a contact in the Edge team and I will ask if they can say anything about 3.1 support.

Richard

[Bill McCoy]

Thanks Richard for the info. Now that's it's not just a developer preview but closer to market with what is launching as the "Creators Update for Windows" I'm sure it will be getting more attention and usage.

I'm especially interested in metrics per the epubtest.org "regimen", the process for testing EPUB 3 support is here: http://epubtest.org/docs/instructions-for-evaluators/ .

--Bill

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[ro...@outlook.com]

Sure. I weng through many of the tests but not recorded the results. I will happily do this, but perhaps others will join also.

Richard

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[Bill Kasdorf]

Glad to see epubtest.org being used as it was intended—that is, by anybody who wants to test a reading system, including people developing reading systems, no permission or registration needed. A reminder that BISG's role is to make public those tests that have been done independently (i.e., not by the developer of the tested system unless explicitly permitted by the BISG EPUB Grid WG) and are complete enough to warrant making them public. While that's premature for Edge EPUB support—I doubt that we would want to make results public until software is out of beta—please keep me posted if you do more testing. Not making them public via BISG is not the same as having the results known within the EPUB WG, and soon, we hope, its successor in the W3C. Thanks!

 

Bill Kasdorf
VP and Principal Consultant | Apex CoVantage
p:	734-904-6252  m:   734-904-6252

ISNI: http://isni.org/isni/0000000116490786

ORCiD: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7002-4786