Well impressed by Sidebooks Think i'll delete Comic Zeal now. Only issue i've just found is that it seems to hate large cbr files (eg 40 meg and over) as they crash the app For PDF's its fine so at the moment i'm converting the odd large CBR file i have into a PDF. Shame though with all the crashes. Smaller cbr files seem fine though I paid for the IAP to get more themes, not keen on the wooden bookshelf so its good to change that Shame their support is just a chinese twitter account though. Hopefully they'll read the comments for the app and make some changes. Potentially its so so good
As I mentioned before, I found SlideBooks to be too slow for me. The rendering from page to page ruins it for me. I would say for a free reader, Chunky has my vote. For a paid reader, definitely Comic Zeal right now. I imported several titles yesterday, and it grouped issues in the same series together neatly. And then I tried the individual issues of the Maximum Carnage crossover, and it kept them separated (I was afraid it was going to group each title, like Spider-Man Unlimited #01 and #02 even though those are the first and last chapters). With them separate, I made a new folder and was able to quickly toss each issue into it in the right order. I'm looking forward to the next update with DropBox support because I rarely connect my iPad to my computer. On a side note, I used iExplorer to take out the files I had in ComicBookLover, ran an automator script to change their extensions to .cbr, and was able to make note of which issues I had left off with. That helped a lot since I had forgotten a lot of single issues of random comics I had previously loaded into it. Then after deleting the CBL app, I gained a few gigs of space on my iPad! It's Japanese, by the way.
Im using Comic Zeal right now. Not the best and a bit slow but it works for now. You guys might want to try YACReader.
Oops sorry japanese !! I'm torn, i deleted Comic Zeal and i've gone with Slidebooks. But yeah there are some issues. I love the way Slidebooks puts the books on the shelf and landscape view its amazing how you turn from page to page. Shame you cant have two pages per view on landscape on Comic Zeal. I spent a fair chunk of time yesterday converting cbr files to pdf's, those never crashed in Slidebooks. But 'certain' CBR's (thought it was large files but it seems to be quite eractic) keep crashing the app and look like a 'broken book icon' when you import them. Once you delete the 'rogue' book the app doesnt keep crashing. Pain though But like you say the page rendering in Slidebook is very slow, i'm 'trying' to live with it as i love the way the books are displayed. Comic Zeal i like but when i tried to give the folders names the text was cut off and looked quite poor. I'm going to re-install the app so i know when this new update comes out and see what thats like. Either way its amazing to read cbr/pdf files directly on your phone or have a large collection of them with you at all times
Well that didnt take long ! Gone back to Comic Zeal ! I loved the way they books looked on the shelf for Slidebooks and when you view it i love the double spread on landscape view. BUT as you say the rendering is very slow, many .cbr files kept crashing the app which was frustrating. Comic Zeal works much better so i'm currently putting everything back in there, shame though !
I caught on the developers Twitter account that universal support is coming, developer posted an eta of one to two months.
CBL just got updated with iOS 8 support. Since I already paid for Comic Zeal, and since it's really nice, I'll probably stick with that. However, for a free comic book reader, ComicBookLover is easily the best I've used.
Contacted slidebooks via twitter and an email address but nothing. Frustrating when devs act like that
How about Manga 360. It's the best manga app I have ever use, a lot of manga to read. Only drawback is it does not have any comic, but it's okie for me since it's free.
putermcgee - I can't see an update on the AppStore for iOS 8, where did you see this? Ah, see it now. Updated for iPhone, but no update for the iPad app yet - darn!
Found this amazing thread where this guy was going through all the CBR apps out there and saying what ones were the best/advantages etc , cant find the URL, i'll post it when i find it again Basically theres a lot of good apps out there but each of them does slightly different things. Eg i love the layout on Sidebooks, Comic Zeal not so much. YACReader looks great, but somehow no double page view on landscape and no PDF import (next update will fix the PDFs) I'm still looking for that 'ultimate' one !!
So ComicZeal got updated, and looks great still. They even added some optional themes. They finally added DropBox support, but I really wish they had taken notes from ComicBookLover because it's terrible in its current state. Once you get access to your DropBox files, you can only download one at a time, and after it finishes, it has to uncompress the file and sort it. During this time, you can't do anything else. If you're looking for a free comic reader, CBL is hands down the best option still. For a paid option, CBL is still better than almost everything I've tried. If I hadn't already gotten comfortable with CZ's UI, I'd probably bail on it in favor of CBL.
I've been waiting weeks for Comic Zeal to be updated then funnily enough it does and its ios8 only ! (I'm ios7 on my iphone due to being jailbreaked). Updated my ipad and its 'okay', i was expecting more with double page landscape options etc. I've kept with Sidebooks, got rid of the crashes i've had by recompiling PDF's or CBR files as it does seem to crash with 'some' of them. Love the way it looks with the bookshelf and the landscape view with 2 pages and page curls. Got about 3 meg worth of files on it, i've kept with SideBooks rather than Comic Zeal now
Sidebooks has kept me happy ever since I found it a year or two ago. I basically wanted a reader which let me turn comics into one infinite Landscape scroll, and Sidebooks does that perfectly. Can't ever see myself needing to pay for another app while that's still around.
Well i paid the tiny 69p IAP to get the other looks for the bookshelf I did just have a PDF just now crash whenever i tried to open it, problem is it kept trying to reopen the 'corrupt' file (works okay on my ipad though). Had to use iFunbox to delete the rogue file, i've republished a new one and now seems good. I tried asking the dev if they'll be doing more updates as i do find CBR files over 30 meg seem to crash a lot (or be eractic, i've got one 120 meg file which works, most dont) so lately i've been converting everything to PDF (http://www.zamzar.com/ is very useful for any CBR files under 100 meg if you want to convert it to a PDF). But love the way Sidebooks works, feel it should get more love !!
