<div>I have been playing around quite a lot with Blio for PC over the past few hours, reading through the manual, trying out reading features, downloading and searching for books, and so I thought I'd relay my experiences and opinions. </div>
<div><br></div><div>My overall opinion is that this present release of Blio, while it is a promising effort, leaves quite a lot to be desired. Like most of you, I have been waiting for Blio for about a year and tracking all of the missed release dates--February, April, June, July. Thus, that it delivers so far short on so many counts is very very disappointing. </div>
<div><br></div><div>People on this list have been waiting, especially, for accessibility features. We have been expecting usable and complete keyboard navigation and screen reader accessibility. Well, we're going to have to wait a while longer for those promised "features." As Sean pointed out, Blio is saying there won't be screen reader accessibility until October (let's hope they actually deliver on that date (fat chance??)). And I'm assuming (but definitely not holding my breath) that that "accessible" release will include better (full?) keyboard support--keyboard support is definitely *not good* right now.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Unlike some others in this thread, I did not run into any installation problems. But I also have a newer Windows 7 laptop. Even with my laptop and hardware acceleration for graphics, I have noticed pretty clunky animation transitions in various reading views and when moving between panels in the bookstore. (More on that later.) </div>
<div><br></div><div>It is clear that the current Blio for PC needs a fairly powerful machine to run smoothly. During installation, if you don't have at least .NET framework version 3.5 you will be prompted to update. Win 7 or Vista users won't hit this snag (Win 7 shipped with .NET 4.0). You may also be prompted to install PlayReady, a Microsoft DRM software package. This isn't a big deal and goes smoothly--though I did not try installing while running a screen reader....</div>
<div><br></div><div>So as not to drag out my review, I'm going to enumerate what I found good and not so good with the current product.</div><div><br></div><div>What is good:</div><div><ul><li>Has ability to <b>highlight text</b> in various colors.</li>
<li>Can make <b>text notes</b> on any passage in a book--you select text and associate a note with that text.</li><li>Can <b>look up words or phrases</b> via user-configurable services. For example, you can lookup a word at <a href="http://dictionary.reference.com">dictionary.reference.com</a> or <a href="http://thesaurus.reference.com">thesaurus.reference.com</a> or a phrase or name via wikipedia, all while remaining in Blio. Blio has a built in web browser and when you highlight a word or phrase, it allows you to select a reference and perform a search on that reference with the results appearing in the browser that pops up as a full-screen overlay over the book you are currently reading. While this does not feel as "integrated" as the lookup in iBooks, it is certainly serviceable and is more flexible, since you can add any number of lookup services.</li>
<li>Allows you to read <b>both XPS and ePub books</b> (but not PDF, even though PDF was promised). XPS books look like their print counterparts--page fidelity is maintained. However, you can also have XPS books "reflow." And you can set a number of different page layouts, including double page (side by side), single page, 3-D book view with animated page turning, and, perhaps most interesting, a "ReadLogic" view, which animates your movement through the book by drawing a box around a portion of a page and then zooming that portion with a (not always very smooth) animation. </li>
<li><b>ReadAloud functionality</b>: You can "play" a book by clicking a play button or, in certain views, by double-clicking a word on a page. Blio will read aloud, using your Windows installed voices, and highlight each word as it reads. It would be nice to have more sophisticated highlighting. For example, highlighting a whole sentence and then using a secondary highlight to read word by word through that sentence. Such highlighting options are available in Read and Write Gold and other text-reading assitive technologies. But, for a first release, the word by word highlighting will probably prove very useful for people with reading disabilities. It reads aloud with your installed voices. If you have only Microsoft Anna (or worse), then the experience won't be that great. Getting a couple of good SAPI 5 voices would be a good idea for Blio users. You can set the reading speed and choose the voice inside of Blio's settings menus. </li>
<li><b>Keyboard navigation through pages</b> of a book and through ReadLogic "zoomed" portions of a page. The latter is the most interesting way to read: As you press Enter (Shift-Enter to go backwards), you progress from viewing a full page and then animate to a zoomed view of a portion of the page. Press Enter again and you animate to the next zoomed portion of a page. This is a pretty compelling reading experience. (Note the caveat in the section below, regarding using ReadLogic and ReadAloud simultaneously.)</li>
<li>Ability to <b>download both free and purchased books</b>. At present, a user can purchase (a limited number of) books from the Baker and Taylor catalog. But you can also download free epub books from FeedBooks and Google Books, without having to leave Blio.</li>
</ul></div><div>What is not good:</div><div><ul><li><b>Using ReadLogic and ReadAloud simultaneously is problematic. </b>In other views, when you use the ReadAloud function, highlighting remains visible--the page will scroll or you will move to another page as it continues to read and highlight. In ReadLogic zoomed mode, however, the highlighting may disappear below the currently visible area, forcing you to hit the Enter key to zoom to the next ReadLogic portion--but doing so, stops the read aloud. To restart read aloud you have to select some text and click the play button at the bottom of the Blio window.</li>
<li>Unlike Kindle for PC, there is <b>no way to search on text phrases</b> within a book.</li><li><b>ReadLogic and some other animations are jerky</b>, even on my relatively high-powered laptop (2.4 GHz, Intel Core i5 with 4GB of RAM).</li>
<li><b>Limited keyboard shortcuts/accessibility</b>. Blio is not operable solely via keyboard--very far from it, in fact. Current keyboard shortcuts allow only for zooming pages, moving by pages/ReadLogic zoom levels within a book, navigating the library, and moving through books in the download area. It is possible to move through a book word by word and highlight via the keyboard, but only if you first click on a word in the text--you can't get there by keyboard alone. And most of the menu and other options and settings cannot be accessed by keyboard alone.</li>
<li><b>No shortcuts for starting, stopping, and advancing ReadAloud playback</b>. Until there are reliable shortcut keys for stopping and starting the read aloud functionality, the only worthwhile settings options seems be choosing Continuous" as the ReadAloud mode (keeps reading until you click the page or hit pause) or setting the mode to "Self-paced" and the unit to "Page." At least in the XPS and epub books I experimented with, it is clear Blio does not really understand what a paragraph is: if you set reading "Units" to "Paragraph," it will stop reading every couple of lines, rather than at the end of a paragraph.</li>
<li><b>No way to adjust ReadAloud speed via keyboard shortcuts</b>. The only way to adjust read-aloud speed is via the settings menu outside of the book view. It would be nicer to have keyboard shortcuts for adjusting speed of playback on the fly.</li>
<li>There is <b>no means to search via highlight color or highlights</b> (regardless of color). However, selecting or editing a note in the notes panel moves you to that place in the book--<i>but</i> once there, how to I get back to my current reading position? There is <b>no "back" button, nor can you enter a page number and jump to it, nor bookmark a page. </b>You can navigate by page thumbnail, via the table of contents, and via simple page turns. Adding jumping by page number, highlight, and bookmark would dramatically improve book navigation.</li>
<li><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><div style="display: inline !important; "><b>No contrast settings, no Windows high-contrast mode.<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal;"> In comparison, white/gray on black and light gray on sepia are available on Kindle on PC.</span></b> Blio also does not adopt Windows high-contrast settings.</div>
</span></b></li><li><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><div style="display: inline !important; ">There is <b>no true full-screen mode</b>, unlike Kindle for PC which can go full-screen. </div>
</span></b></li><li><b><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-weight: normal; "><div style="display: inline !important; "></div></span></b>Compared to iBooks, the <b>graphics for turning a page and the gradient that represents the shadow</b> for the left hand page when in double-page layout mode do not render smoothly. Parts of Blio look "unpolished" and "beta."</li>
<li><b>Blio Store collection of books limited at present</b>. The Baker and Taylor collection of books available to Blio is a start, but is not even in the same ballpark as Amazon's bookstore for Kindle. (Try searching for Arthur Conan Doyle, Raymond Chandler, or Dashiell Hammett in both Kindle and Blio and you will see instantly what I mean.) It will be nice when they start to add more books. Also, the Blio store doesn't have things Amazon shoppers have come to expect, like the ability to preview chapters in a book and read extensive reviews and/or rankings. Prices seem higher than Amazon or Kobo, as well. Also, the <b>Google + Feedbooks search didn't always return books from both repositories</b>--usually, Feedbooks came back alone, without stuff from the Google catalog.</li>
<li>The user's Library is easy to get around in and can be viewed many different ways, but it has some quirks. For example, Blio "ships" with three downloadable XPS formatted books--two childrens books and a book on Woodstock. It's hard to imagine most people wanting to keep these books, and yet there appeared <b>no way to delete them from the library</b>. You can "filter" on books that are actually resident on the local computer and this will filter out those junk books. However they remain "ready for download." Why can't I remove all reference to them?</li>
<li><b>No means to organize books</b>. There should be a way to organize books in the Library into user-created folders or "bookcases" (or some other such metaphor). This would be a necessity for a student trying to organize textbooks by class or subject, for example.</li>
</ul></div><div>Best regards,<br>ken<br>---<br> Ken Petri <br> Program Director, OSU Web Accessibility Center<br> 102D Pomerene Hall, 1760 Neil Avenue<br> Columbus, Ohio 43210<br> Office: 614.292.1760<br>
Mobile: 614.218.1499<br> Fax: 614.292.4190<br> Email: <a href="mailto:petri.1@osu.edu">petri.1@osu.edu</a><br>
<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Tue, Sep 28, 2010 at 5:31 PM, Jeffrey Dell <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:jeffreydell99@gmail.com">jeffreydell99@gmail.com</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
I was able to install, open, Create my user, and read a book with the<br>
Read Outloud feature. I also downloaded The Adventures of Tom Sawyer.<br>
and started to read it. The navigation features did not seem to work<br>
well with JAWS yet.<br>
Access with JAWS was poor so the warning is true. JAWS would not read<br>
many radio buttons and would not read the text of the book itself. My<br>
install was on a Win 7 64 bit PC. When I had MAGic on with inverse<br>
contrast the contrast of the text in the book was not very sharp.<br>
At the moment I am more impressed with iBooks. It does have the<br>
accessibility of the Kindel and Barnes and Noble ebook softwares<br>
beaten (which did not take much).<br>
Jeff<br>
<div><div></div><div class="h5"><br>
On 9/28/10, Kelmer, Susan M. <<a href="mailto:SKelmer@stlcc.edu">SKelmer@stlcc.edu</a>> wrote:<br>
> Well, I'm not having any luck either. It also made me update my .NET<br>
> framework, which I am always reluctant to do because it can break other<br>
> things. When I try to run it, I get an error and it wants to send it to<br>
> Microsoft. Not very helpful. I'm going to try a reboot and see if that<br>
> helps.<br>
><br>
> Susan Kelmer<br>
> Lab Coordinator/AT Specialist<br>
> St. Louis Community College @ Meramec<br>
> 314-984-7951<br>
><br>
><br>
> _______________________________________________<br>
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