Help with Stanza

I'd suggest using a light to medium tan color for the background and a dark brown for the text. Keep the font a little larger than normal to reduce eyestrain.

 

I like a pale yellow page with dark- but not too dark -brown lettering in Georgia.

EDIT: Spork beat me to it.

Here's my current Stanza set up Vs Classics, what I believe to be the most easy on the eyes:

 

To be more specific, I'm using Georgia font, about a fifth of the way up the font slider (I wish they'd just use a number), with "parchment" as my background color and "saddle brown" as my text color.

 

Are you reading with the lights out? I'd recommend reading with at least some light on, reading in the dark is brutal on the eyes.

 

I usually read a book at the end of the day, yeah, with paper...

 

Just press the yin yang button, to switch the background to black and the font to white. Then swipe down with your finger to lower the brightness. Swipe up if you want it brighter, but that's no so easy on the eyes in a dark room.

Sorry to hijack, but has anyone tried the newest update? It said something about removing the 'add books by USB' feature. Didn't know that was possible.

 

After drooling over iBooks' beautiful presentation it's hard to go back to Stanza.

However, being the genius that I am, have found a way to make Stanza look pretty much exactly the same as iBooks using a thoroughly overlooked feature.

So, gloating and ego-boosting aside, I'll show you how I have done so.

First, I resized and adjusted font size, paragraph indent and line spacing, margins, etc. to the point where they look almost the same (georgia + black).

Secondly, I uploaded an iBooks screenshot into my favourite image editor, Pixelmator, and got rid of the text so that I was left with a blank iBooks page.

Thirdly, I cropped the image to edit out the status bar, so the image was slightly smaller than the iPhone screen. Now, if you wished to read without the status bar I would suggest creating a rectangular selection box around the page, copying and pasting, then stretch the image out over the status bar.

Now save and email the images to yourself. Open up Mail and save the images in Photos.

Open Stanza and enter Settings. Under the Appearance tab when you scroll to the bottom there should be a "Background Image" option. Select the blank iBooks page and make sure the opacity is as high as it goes. Now if you're wondering why I made the image slightly smaller than a screenshot it's because when you have the status bar showing Stanza pushes the background image down so you don't see the full image so I used an image that was a little smaller the normal and it works just fine.

Start reading!


Template:



Comparison

iBooks:




Stanza:



Start reading!

 

Very clever. I don't think I can do all that, though, since I don't know how.
Will it work if I use the image in your post--> emailed myself the "blank page" image?
And is there any way to do this so that the book will look like the iBook when in landscape position?

I actually like Stanza better, since it has so many more customization options, but I do like the appearance of the pages in iBooks, as well as the bookshelf...

 

You could just save the image in Safari. Less hassle.

You could (theoretically) view it the same way as iBooks on the iPad if Stanza had support for a multi-column view.

iPhone iBooks doesn't have the fancy two page view that the iPad has so with my current set up Stanza and iBooks in landscape look identical.

This. I especially love the option to change the book cover and add your own libraries. Drinkmalk is awesome.

 

Thanks, The Game Reaper.
I agree--Drinkmalk is fantastic!

 

They added it then removed it?