[Windows Phone 7 Apps and Games] Jim Chapman:
Beta-testing Freda ebook reader (version 2.6)

I've got a new release (2.6) of Freda ready for beta-testing. I've just emailed my regular beta-testing team with a link - but if you're interested in testing the program (and you've not received an email from me in the last few minutes) please contact me and I will sign you up to the beta-testing group.

The new version includes assorted new features, such as:

The main screen is now a panorama style display with a pretty background image (which you can turn off if it annoys you)

The bookshelf uses a metro-style virtualising list box (which means it can list all your books - I tested it up to 1000 books, and performance was still OK). If you sort by author or title, you'll get a jump-list view.

OPDS, SkyDrive and DropBox sources provide a 'get all' bulk download feature, that will let you download all the books shown on the current screen (or you can select only some of them if you prefer).

The book info display is a proper screen, and allows you to edit the book title and author if you want.

The main screen (now a panorama) includes a 'more' tab with shortcuts to popular options, and a 'feedback' screen.

The control panel on the book screen is reorganised (I added a 'go to' feature, and made the bookmark screen look more Metro-like)

The program now supports FB2 format as well (but doesn't yet handle embedded images)

The settings screen now includes a tab for controls - which shows you what areas on the book page have particular control actions associated with them, and lets you change these actions.

<CODE> and <PRE> content is now displayed in a fixed-width font (though not very prettily)

You can backup and restore your bookshelf and sources to your SkyDrive. This affects only the list of books and source definitions - it does not back up/restore settings, presets or bookmarks. It also doesn't do anything with the book files themselves (and actually, I doubt I will ever want to implement that because it might put Freda dangerously close to being a 'tool for content piracy').

Performance is generally somewhat faster.

Memory usage is lower, and if you want to ensure really low memory usage, there is a special 'low memory mode' setting that you can use to do that - mainly it works by turning off the background images in the UI, and by insisting on keeping more book data in (slow) IsoStore, rather than (faster) program memory. This mode gets set automatically if the program detects that it's running on a low-spec device.

If you have a book which uses <DIV> rather than <P> to mark paragraphs, the previous version of Freda would not understand this, and would not apply paragraph formatting (e.g. line breaks) correctly. There is now an advanced setting ('divs are paragraphs') that you can use to tell Freda to treat DIVs as if they were Ps.

SkyDrive credentials get remembered consistently (in the previous version, there were some situations where a user was being asked to re-authenticate every time they accessed SkyDrive).

Advertising is no longer shown on the bookshelf/sources page. Instead, it appears on an interstitial page that comes up the first time you open a book, and from time to time thereafter.

You can now set a password (it's in the settings screen) - and thereafter you will need to enter that password before the program will start.

The UI is translated into German and French. Anyone willing to translate any to other languages would earn my eternal gratitude ... also the opportunity to have your name on the credits screen, and the offer of a pint of beer.