Program for reading book. Book reader for computer - review of the best programs. Reading and critical thinking

High technologies and gadgets today are replacing almost all familiar things, replacing them with digital analogues. Books have not been left out: more and more people are reading digital rather than printed words. Paper books are steadily losing popularity, while electronic readers, on the contrary, are gaining popularity. And in the future, reading will become even more interesting, because digital technologies offer, in addition to the text itself, a lot of additional options. Manufacturers are working on introducing the latter, and they can be seen in the next generations of electronic readers. Find out below what e-book users will be able to do besides reading.

Almost every manufacturer is trying to improve electronic readers and adding their own unique functions for this purpose. Thus, Amazon, in its Kindle e-readers, is working to ensure that virtual pages are practically indistinguishable from those in paper books. To do this, he introduced the Page Flip feature, which will allow you to look several pages ahead and find out what happened to the main character. And then by pressing a button you can return to the current page and continue reading, better understanding the development of events.

Apple suggests not giving up bookshelves, from which you can take your favorite book, look at its cover and evaluate how it looks among your neighbors. And if you wish, you can admire the author’s autograph: the Apple company received a patent for embedding the author’s signature in digital books. At the same time, the speed of delivery of the ordered publication is one instant. All this can be done on iOS gadgets that allow you to buy e-books through the iBooks application.

Another innovation that may soon appear in digital books is user comments. They will be able to express their thoughts on passages of text that affected them and discuss it with other readers. A similar technology is being developed by the startup Social Books. “We love what the Kindle or Nook has achieved,” says startup CEO Jason Johnson. “But if all they do is replicate the experience of paper books as closely as possible, then they won’t be able to change anything about the reading experience itself.”

Other developers from Small Demons are going to provide users with a search for similar books, not by plot, but by some elements and decorations. For example, a user likes the style of clothing and balls in the book “The Great Gatsby,” then the system will offer a choice of 67 more books that have similar settings.

Lots of developments like these could give us optimism about how users will read in the near future. However, book market experts disagree with this. “Many of these solutions came about because programmers could do it, rather than because of actual user needs,” says Peter Meyers, author of the think tank Breaking the Pages. In it, he looks at the future of e-books and how the reading experience will change. “We created stimuli and now call them enhancements.”

Due to the too slow progress in e-books, other experts do not believe in successful development, for example, Bob Stein, an innovator and founder. “People often ask me to tell them what will happen to books in the future,” he says. “Honestly, I can’t stand this question anymore.”

In general, books have come a long way in their history. Technologies for their production have reached great heights: paper volumes are easy to use, cheap to print, can last for decades and do not require much energy. For several centuries, a paper book has remained the best way to transmit knowledge.

The situation changed with the advent of the Internet, which made it possible to distribute texts in a few clicks. “The physical book has become a limited thing whose design ends at its cover,” says Peter Brantley. He hosts the Books in Browsers technology conference in San Francisco. “In digital form, all restrictions have disappeared.”

Thus, one of the properties of paper books that users often complain about is the amount of time needed to read it. They do not want to spend many hours, but want to get information from the text quickly. With digital technology, you can get rid of this: the Safari Books service offers to read the chapters the user needs for a monthly subscription fee of $29. For example, if a reader wants just a few recipes from a cookbook, such as pasta dishes, they can buy them for just $4.99 instead of purchasing the entire volume.

The New York startup Citia went even further: instead of ripping out chapters from a book, they reworked the entire publication, changing the style of its presentation together with the authors. For example, editors take a technical or nonfiction book and reorganize the ideas in the text into compact cards. The latter are then convenient to read on various devices and send via social networks.

“Being able to devote 10 or 15 hours to reading a book becomes a fraught decision,” Meyers notes. He liked the idea of ​​Citia so much that he became its vice president of editing and content innovation. “What we need now is ways to free the ideas contained in books.”

Technology will enable reading in a new way

One of the first books processed using the Citia method was Kevin Kelly’s publication “What Technology Wants.” The material from the book was sorted into quotes, and general conclusions were collected on one card. From there, the reader can begin a journey through the text, revealing the nuances for themselves. The author liked the result. “I was surprised by the amount of work Citia did,” says Kelly. “They cataloged the entire book, idea by idea.”

On the other hand, the author of “What Technology Wants” expressed his thoughts in the text. If others have reorganized them, then what is the point of writing an original book? This may be one of the reasons why in almost two years of its existence, Citia has converted only four books to the card system. But the startup's management does not lose hope. “All companies are becoming media companies,” Meyers said. “And they all need to tell stories about their products.”

Still, there is no need to worry about the books themselves: they will survive over time, although they will change along the way. “We will continue to think of books as books even after they migrate to the Internet,” says Brantley. “But the way the narrative is presented will inevitably expand.”

Despite the fact that mobile e-books have appeared, replacing traditional paper sources of information for readers, it is advisable to have a book reader on your own computer. It may be needed, for example, for reading technical, scientific and fiction literature, as well as for viewing drawings that are now created in book format.
There are a lot of programs for reading books on a computer. Below is a selection of readers that have managed to prove themselves from the best side.

Cool Reader

The features of the computer reader are as follows:

• automatic page turning. The function can be disabled if you need to spend significant time familiarizing yourself with the data on the page;
• adjusting the background and font brightness in accordance with the user's wishes;
• viewing the contents of books in archives without unpacking them.

ALReader

The main feature of the reader is its many settings. But the average user is unlikely to have to change anything, and he can easily get by with the default settings. ALReader supports a lot of formats, including ODT and FB2. It is precisely thanks to the ability to view the last two formats that the reader has become in demand.

It is noteworthy that when creating the program, the creators paid special attention to its design. Having opened ALReader, the user will be surprised to see a book on printed newspaper sheets in front of him. To use the reader there is no need to install it. Immediately after downloading it can be used in full mode.

FBReader

It has a simple and intuitive interface that is easy to customize if desired. All open book files are classified according to characteristics - title, genre and author.

There is no need to move e-books to a shared folder - FBReader automatically creates links to their location in the computer's memory. The program has one drawback - a two-page mode is not provided.

Adobe Reader

Documents in PDF format can also pose a threat to your computer. Attackers inject malicious scripts into them, and therefore, before opening anything, you should check the file in an antivirus program.

The same problem applies to other programs where you can open books and documents in PDF. To minimize risks, you should use only the latest versions of the reader. The program takes up a lot of space in the computer's memory and takes much longer to install than other software products with similar purposes.

DjVuViwer

The advantages of the program are as follows:

• opening documents in other formats besides .djvu;
• you can scroll through all the pages, rather than flipping through them two at a time, which happens in the vast majority of programs;
• creating bookmarks in a simple and convenient way;
• fast speed of opening books.

Foxit Reader

The program menu is presented in several languages. The application operates primarily on computers running Windows. But, recently, versions have appeared that can run on PCs running Windows OS.

ICE Book Reader Professional

The program includes two modules of equal importance - a library and a reader. You can choose one-page or two-page mode to view documents.

Often the mode is selected in accordance with the user's preferences and the size of the monitor screen. Each mode has its own set of settings.

The advantage and at the same time the disadvantage (due to the increase in data space occupied) of the reader is that it automatically downloads all books to the library in full. So the file can be deleted from the main location at a later time.

If the amount of data storage space is small, then you should go to the settings and adjust the compression level.

ICE Book Reader Professional has the following features:

• support for files in various formats. Exception - .pdf;
• The entered settings are remembered by the reader automatically. The next time you turn it on, you will not need to change the parameters again;
• data can be opened from archives without involving one or another archiver. Information can be viewed in archives in the following formats: .zip, .rar and others.

STDU Viewer

The most important advantage is multi-format. With it you can open documents in .pdf format.

Conclusion

Whoever predicted the end of books with the beginning of the development of computer technology. However, progress is progress, but books have lived and still live (and will continue to live). It’s just that everything has changed somewhat - paper tomes have been replaced by electronic ones.

And this, I must note, has its advantages: on the most ordinary computer or tablet (on Android) more than one thousand books can fit, each of which can be opened and started reading in a matter of seconds; there is no need to keep a large cabinet in the house to store them - everything fits on the PC disk; Electronic video makes it convenient to make bookmarks and reminders, etc.

The best programs for reading e-books (*.fb2, *.txt, *.doc, *.pdf, *.djvu and others)

For Windows

Several useful and convenient “readers” that will help you immerse yourself in the process of absorbing another book while sitting at your computer.

Cool Reader

One of the most common programs, both for Windows and Android (although, in my opinion, for the latter, there are programs that are more convenient, but more about them below).

Among the main features:

• supports formats: FB2, TXT, RTF, DOC, TCR, HTML, EPUB, CHM, PDB, MOBI (i.e. all the most common and in demand);
• adjusting the brightness of the background and fonts (a mega convenient thing, you can make reading convenient for any screen and person!);
• auto-flipping (convenient, but not always: sometimes you read one page for 30 seconds, another for a minute);
• convenient bookmarks (this is very convenient);
• the ability to read books from archives (this is also very convenient, since many are distributed online in archives);

AL Reader

Another very interesting “reader”. Among its main advantages: it is the ability to select encodings (which means that when opening a book, “cracked” and unreadable characters are practically excluded); support for both popular and rare formats: fb2, fb2.zip, fbz, txt, txt.zip, partial support for epub (without DRM), html, docx, odt, rtf, mobi, prc (PalmDoc), tcr.

In addition, it should be noted that this program can be used both on Windows and Android. I would also like to note that this program has quite fine adjustments to brightness, fonts, indents, and other “things” that will help you adjust the display to perfect condition, regardless of the equipment used. I definitely recommend you check it out!

In my humble opinion, this is one of the best programs for reading e-books on Android. I use it on my tablet all the time.

Judge for yourself:

• a huge number of formats are supported: FB2, ePub, PDF, DJVU, MOBI, PDF, HTML, DOC, RTF, TXT (including audio formats: MP3, AAC, M4B and Reading Books Out Loud (TTS));
• entirely in Russian;
• convenient search, bookmarks, brightness settings, etc.

Those. A program from the category - installed it once and forgot about it, you just use it without thinking! I recommend trying it, a screenshot from it below.

FullReader+

Another convenient application for Android. I also often use it, opening one book in the first reader (see above), and the second in this one :).

Main advantages:

• support for a bunch of formats: fb2, epub, doc, rtf, txt, html, mobi, pdf, djvu, xps, cbz, docx, etc.;
• ability to read aloud;
• convenient setting of the background color (for example, you can make the background like a real old book, some people like it);
• built-in file manager (it’s convenient to immediately search for what you need);
• a convenient “memorizer” of recently opened books (and reading the current one).

Book cataloging

For those who have a lot of books, it is quite difficult to do without some kind of cataloguer. Keeping in mind hundreds of authors, publishing houses, what has been read and what has not yet been read, and to whom something was given is a rather difficult task. And in this regard, I would like to highlight one utility - All My Books.

All My Books

A simple and convenient cataloger. Moreover, one important point: you can catalog both paper books (which are on your shelf in your closet) and electronic ones (including audio books, which have become popular recently).

Main advantages of the utility:

• quick addition of books, it is enough to know one thing: author, title, publisher, etc.;
• entirely in Russian;
• supported by popular Windows OS: XP, Vista, 7, 8, 10;
• there is no manual “red tape” - the program loads all data in auto mode (including: price, cover, publisher information, year of release, authors, etc.).

Everything is quite simple and fast. We press the “Insert” button (or through the “Book/Add book” menu), then enter something that we remember (in my example, just “Urfene Jus”) and press the search button.

We will see a table with the found options (with covers!): from them you will only have to choose exactly the one you were looking for. You can see the one I was looking for in the screenshot below. In total, it took about 15-20 seconds to do everything about everything (to add the whole book)!

Fb2 format was created as a universal way to store books. It has many useful properties, and one of them is the ease of conversion to a number of other formats. However, not every user has a fb2 reader on their computer. This is what slowed down the development of the format. But if you have a special utility, you can enjoy convenient book reading.

Free FB2 readers

Universal "reader". It supports most formats for storing books and works with any amount of information and number of sheets. To use it, you don’t need to install anything, you just need to run the executable file. It's really convenient and fast.

It would seem that such a simple program should have little functionality, but this is not true. In fact, Cool Reader meets all modern requirements. In addition to reading the fb2 format, this program will ensure work with any documents, including those located on the network! For this, there is convenient access to online libraries.

The utility's interface is very convenient and simple. It is divided into several parts, one of which shows recent files, the second - the document directory, and the third - settings. This approach allows you to use it regardless of the localization language. According to many users, this is the best program.

A little old-fashioned, but very functional program for Windows. It allows you to work with absolutely any text formats, and can also connect to archives! Now you don't need to extract books from RAR, ZIP or other packages, you just need to specify the path to them.

In addition, it should be noted that there is a huge variety of settings. In the program you can customize almost everything - from the catalog to the font. It should also be noted that the cataloging system is incredibly extensive and convenient. In it you can divide books by categories, genres, your own wishes, the number of bookmarks and even corrections. By the way, they allow you to remove typos from the text.

ICE Book Reader Professional will help you preserve your vision. There are a number of different viewing modes available to suit different conditions.

It's not called that for nothing. This program works with all formats that a user can find on the Internet. Docx, abw and even chm books can be read in Alreader. This is the main advantage of the utility. It does not have any outstanding interface design, but it is not irritating to the eyes, even after a very long time of reading.

Alreader will help you tune in and focus on the process. To do this, you can choose the most convenient font, background color and illumination, and even anti-aliasing mode. This approach to customization allows the user to truly enjoy reading. The program has the usual “day” and “night” modes, as well as a lot of unique settings.
It is important to note that the background for reading can be as authentic as possible - in the form of paper of varying degrees of preservation. The background images are made of very high quality, which will help you get aesthetic pleasure.

At this stage, the program is still being finalized, so it has several shortcomings. For example, table formats and CSS styles are not fully supported. However, this practically does not limit the reader. Problems will occur extremely rarely, on single copies.

In FB2 Reader you can create an entire library, cataloging information according to one of a dozen different parameters. This program can be downloaded for free and used without any restrictions.

STDU Viewer- can hardly be called a classic reader. It is designed to work with any documents, including e-books. Many free programs specialize in reading ease. This is very important, but not in all cases. The same program is more aimed at maximum functionality. You can view any document format in it. It's hard to even think of a book that STDU Viewer can't open.

The program interface is laconic, but very convenient. Small symbolic icons can be understood intuitively, especially since everything is translated into Russian. Despite the huge number of different possibilities, they are neatly placed in several panels, allowing the user to concentrate on the text.

Among the unique features, it is worth noting the format converter and the ability to work with images. Also, STDU Viewer allows you to print documents.

How does the information carrier affect the digestibility of the material?