Lightkeepers: Make Reading on your Computer a Pleasure With MartView

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Make Reading on your Computer a Pleasure With MartView

via MakeUseOf.com by Ryan Dube on 5/28/10

One of the problems I've always had with reading eBooks online is that it just doesn't have the same look and feel of a real book or magazine. When you hold a book in your hands, you can grip the corner of the page and curl it back just as your finishing the last few words on the page, and then quickly toss the page over to the next page so you can continue without pause. This is part of the experience of reading, and it's something that is very hard to give up as you transition to the digital medium of the Internet.

Luckily, there are eBook reader devices that now incorporate an animated sort of "page turning." Those features are awesome, but they don't help you much when you're trying to read an eBook on your computer when you're not mobile. This is why I was very excited to discover an awesome desktop eBook reader called MartView.

MartView is a unique digital reader application for Windows (Mac version available soon) that recreates this "authentic" reading experience. Using this reader, you can also read regular PDF documents as well, such as a free PDF eBook download. You can slowly or quickly turn or bend pages, scroll through documents using a variety of methods and orientations, and much more.

MartView Makes Reading Digital Documents Enjoyable

What I love about the free MartView eBook reader is the design that's very easy on the eyes, and the functionality that really does make you feel like you have ultimate control over the motion of the book and the flow of your reading. Once you download and install the application, it looks like this.

Normally, the top menu bar is hidden, but when you bring your mouse near the top of the screen, it drops down. There are a lot of cool options available for how you'd like to navigate through your eBook. You can simply flip through (my favorite), or you can opt for the standard horizontal or vertical slide formats of typical PDF readers.

In the image below, I've grabbed hold of the lower right corner of the page and I'm turning the page in the example eBook. This shows the page in mid-flip, but you can actually hold it there as you would with a normal book. You can put it back if you want, or continue on to the next page. It's a very cool feeling to have so much control over the motion of the page, and the shading and animation really makes it feel like you're looking at a real book.

Changing views is as easy as clicking on the drop-down menu bar. Here, I've instantly changed the navigation to the vertical slide option. In this format you can use the scroll-bar (or your mouse scroll) to scroll up and down the entire eBook.

Another very cool view is the "thumbnails" view. Rather than sifting through a table of contents to find the page that you're looking for, why not browse a thumbnail of all pages of the eBook? This makes it very easy to find diagrams or images that you want to refer back to but don't remember the exact page.

You can use the MartView reader as a standalone PDF or eBook reader, but it also has the ability to connect through your Internet connection and download from the huge library of free eBooks at the MartView website. You don't need an account, all you need to do is install the reader and you can start downloading free eBooks.

You can also create and upload your own eBooks and store them on the MartView library.

You can create and upload an eBook to the MartView library from a PDF eBook, from a collection of your own personal images, or from an archived collection of images and share your eBook with the entire community.

The upload process is really simple and fast. Just select the file, give it a title that you'll remember easily (and a good category), and upload it to MartView.

The coolest part of MartView, in my opinion, is the library. I love free reading material, and the volumes of free content that you'll find at MartView is seemingly unlimited. There are entire collections of online magazines, sorted into categories like Business & Finance, Computers & Tech and a lot more.

Of course, you aren't limited to downloading and reading MartView eBooks only. You can open up any PDF on your computer or that you download from any other PDF-based eBook site using your MartView reader. Here, I opened a free download of A Tale of Two Cities.

You'll notice that the shading and appearance gives your PDF document the look and feel of a real book. Just start paging through and enjoy your reading experience!

As with many good things, there's a downside. I did notice that MartView is a dog when it comes to memory consumption. It's best used with all other applications shut down and devoting the entire screen to the reading experience. Unless you have some massive memory, I wouldn't advise trying to accomplish much else with your computer while running MartView.

With that said, I really like the software and plan to use it whenever I have some free time to sit back and enjoy an e-magazine or a free eBook.

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