HELP WITH READING ONLINE BOOKS
Most of the books we list can be read in an ordinary Web browser by
people with normal vision and physical capabilities, and a reasonably
up-to-date computer.
You may need special programs to read some of the books we list,
either because you have special needs, or the digital formats
of the books have special requirements.
If you need assistance beyond what's given here, please don't
hesitate to contact us (use the email address at the bottom of this page) .
Enlarging the type size
You can increase the type size for many of the online books that appear
in your Web browser (if it's not a page image-based book, and doesn't require
a special plugin). In many browsers,
there's a "Text size" option under the View menu that lets you increase
or decrease the size. A commonly supported shortcut for changing
font size is to hold down
the Control key (or the Apple key on Macs) and either rotate your
mouse's scroll wheel (if it has one),
or hit the '+' or '-' keys on your keyboard.
(Thanks to reader Wanda for the tip on the mouse shortcut!)
Check your browser's Help for more details.
Blind and handicapped readers
Blind and visually impaired readers may need special programs
or devices to read online books. Here are a few useful resource
directories for such tools:
- The
ABLEDATA database is a currently updated general database of products for people with disabilities that includes information on assistive devices and software for reading.
- The
National Library Service for the Blind and Physically Handicapped also has a listing of
devices and software
that may be helpful for visually impaired readers. The list was last updated in 2001, so it might not have recent products listed in ABLEDATA. The NLS also has other digital book programs that may be of interest to blind and handicapped readers, including well-known audio and digitized titles that are not available to the general public.
- See also Bookshare.org and the Open Library's Accessible book collection for lots of books in formats designed for blind and disabled readers. (A small subscription fee applies for Bookshare, but eligible readers get access to many books not otherwise available online, due to special exemptions in the copyright law. Newer books, limited to disabled readers, are also
appearing gradually in the Open Library's accessible book collection.)
Special formats
Some of the formats used for online books may require special programs
to read them. Here is a list of known programs for reading various formats.
Please let me know of others, particularly ones that are freely available.
DjVu
Caminova, the current maintainer of DjVu, makes
a browser plugin for viewing DjVu images available free of charge
for Windows, Mac, and Linux platforms.
See this page for
details. A noncommercial site for DjVu, including links to documentation
and open-source DjVu software,
can be found at DjVu.org.
Epub
The International Digital Publishing Forum's
Epub format for books is not natively readable in most
web browsers, but can be read by a number of plugins and applications.
Two free commercial Epub readers are
Adobe Digital Editions (for Windows 2000 or later, or Mac OS X 1.4.10 or later),
and
LexCycle's Stanza (for
Windows XP and above, Mac OS X 10.4.8 and above, Iphone, and Ipod Touch).
For Linux, there's FBReader.
The Wikpedia Epub page mentions additional
Epub reader programs.
Flash
Some books we list are only available in the Flash format.
The Adobe Flash player
is available for Windows 2000 or later, Mac OS 10.4 or later, and
certain newer Linux distributions. Flash is generally displayed within
a Web browser.
Some open source Flash display programs are also available from third parties.
Certain Flash features might not be fully supported by third party programs
or under Linux.
Users that want to see Flash selectively (for instance, to read books
interactively but block intrusive Flash ads on other web sites) may
want to consider installing a browser plugin like NoScript or Flashblock,
to prevent Flash from running except when the user wishes.
The Wikipedia
page on Flash
has more information about Flash display
and management programs.
As with other proprietary formats, we generally only list titles
that are not also legitimately available in open formats.
Frame-dependent HTML
Most graphical browsers, except for ones that are very old
or designed for specialized devices,
can handle frames. Commonly used frame-capable browsers
include Firefox,
Opera,
Chrome,
Safari, and
Internet Explorer.
However, text-based browsers and other browsers for special needs
may have a harder time with frames.
Some, such as
Lynx, can still
let you navigate through framesets-- but might only show
one frame at a time, making it easy to get lost in a frameset.
If you're thinking of putting a book online that uses frames,
consider making it accessible to frameless browsers as well.
This can often be done with very little extra effort, such as by
making a link to a contents page in a <NOFRAMES> section.
GZipped files
Several programs are available on various platforms to unpack gzipped files.
(Gzip is a format for compressing files, and typically produces files
ending with the suffix .gz . It should not be confused with the "zip"
format, which is described further below.) For more information on
the format, and on software available to uncompress gzipped files, see
the gzip home page.
HTML
This is the standard format for Web pages, and
should be readable in any Web browser (at least, as long as
the preparer of the online book followed Web standards.)
Let me know of any books
described as "HTML" (without qualification) that are not readable
in a commonly used browser. If you
prefer reading larger type than you see on the screen for the book,
most Web browsers will let you increase the size
of HTML text. See the start of this page for details.
MS Reader
Microsoft has a a free program to read MS Reader (.lit) files
that you can download for
Windows machines. Some "Pocket PC" computers also have MS Reader
software built in. I am not aware of any software available
for other platforms, and the file format specifications have not
been published, so I tend to avoid listing MS Reader editions
and other proprietary formats,
except for titles only available in such formats.
Page Images
These are mostly GIF and JPEGs, which most graphical browsers can cope with.
I'd like to hear about any formats used in online books that such
browsers can't already handle (and once I hear of them, I'd like to find
out about programs to display them).
There is no practical way at present to use a text-based browser to
read a book online stored as page images.
PDF
Readable by Adobe Reader (formerly known as Acrobat Reader), available
for Mac, Windows, and many Unix machines.
The latest versions of
Ghostview can also display
many PDF files.
Mac OS X also comes with a "Preview" program than can display most PDF files.
On Unix, there's also xpdf.
Some PDF files (version 1.4 or later) may be incompatible with older
PDF viewers. If you can't read files marked "PDF 1.4" (or other PDF
files) you may need to upgrade to Adobe/Acrobat Reader 5 or later, or
a newer version of other third-party PDF reading programs.
Adobe also provides a set of free tools to convert PDF documents into
HTML or ASCII text, which can be helpful for visually disabled readers.
See this site for
more information. (Note that these tools will not work on certain (very
large) PDFs that consist only of scanned, un-OCR'd page images, since
there's no encoded text to convert.)
Postscript
Several programs can be used to view Postscript files, the best-known
being Ghostview, which
is available for all major computer systems.
Postscript is the language used by most modern printers, so in many
cases you can print the content of Postscript files just by sending the files
to the printer
(however this is done in your system).
Text
Viewable through all Web browsers, but some browsers may run out of memory
on very large text files. For those, try downloading the text straight
to your disk, and then view it using your favorite word processor.
(Word processing programs can typically handle large files more gracefully
than Web browsers.)
TK3
Readable with the TK3 Reader, available for Windows or Mac (OS 8.6 or later)
as a free download. They do require an email address, but you can uncheck a
"notify me about relevant news" box. (They'll still send an acknowledgement
of the download.) After you download the Reader, you immediately get
solicited to download a trial version of the Author program, but you
don't need that to read the books.
As with other proprietary formats that don't have openly published
specifications, we tend to bypass listings for TK3 files in favor
of listings for more open formats, when available.
Word
Microsoft has a a free Word viewer
that you can download, for
Windows 2000 or later.
Word files are also viewable through the regular Microsoft Word program.
The free OpenOffice suite,
available for Windows, Mac, and
Linux, will also display many Word files.
Some other word processing programs also provide converters
from Word to their internal formats, though they don't always work
perfectly for all Word files.
As with other proprietary formats that don't have openly published
specifications, we tend to bypass listings for Word files in favor
of listings for more open formats, when available.
Zipped files
Several programs are available on various platforms to unpack zip files,
including WinZip (for Windows), Stuffit Expander (for Macs and Windows), and
unzip (for Unix).
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Edited by John Mark Ockerbloom (onlinebooks@pobox.upenn.edu)
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