To use the BSON Books Viewer, the first step is to import book content into a database (also called "library") located on your computers or mobile devices. The Viewer can then display book content from the local database and let you bookmark, highlight, annotate and search even without internet connection.
Import Books Into Library
- For Style L, click on
at the top left to visit a home page.
For Style s, Click on 
at the top left to bring up a menu.
In the menu, click on 
to visit the home page. - Within the homepage, from the category, search, or featured titles, select a book of interest.
- From the information page of the selected book, click .
If successful, the book will show up in the Viewer after the importing process is complete.
Limitation: Laptops can process all of our BSON books even for the file size as large as 30 MB. Smartphones and tablets impose a certain limit that increases with larger storage. For a device with 64 GB storage, the limit is about 5 MB per book file. Currently, all major browsers have implemented the functions required by the Viewer to read BSON books offline. A notable exception is Apple's Safari. See An Intentional Bug in Apple's Safari.
Buttons
For Style s, clicking will display a menu. Click it again to hide the menu.
Clicking 
will display table of contents (TOC). Click it again to hide TOC.
For Style L, the button 
at the top right lets you change the background color,
font size, and library view (tiles or list).
The button 
is for going to the previous "ebook page" which is typically
a chapter or section of a book. In Stye L, the button 
is for going back to
the ebook page that links to the current ebook page. For Style s, the link "Go Back" in the menu has the same functionality.
Remove Books from Library
Books may be removed from the library only in the list view. For Style s, click on 
will immediately remove the title from the library. For Style L, click
in front of the title will bring up the "Manage the book" page where you can change the category for the book or remove it from the library.
Bookmark
Double click (using mouse) or double tap (using finger) at the paragraph you wish to bookmark. If successful, a red symbol ¶ will appear at the beginning of the paragraph.
Please note that the Viewer does not automatically track which book or where in a book you are reading. You must bookmark to let the Viewer know. If a book is bookmarked, clicking on its thumbnail or title in the library will go to the bookmarked position.
Create Highlights, Notes and Links
For mouse-operated devices, use the mouse to select a text. For touch-capable devices, use long press (tap and hold for about 1 second) to select a text. A menu will appear at the bottom for "highlight", "Note" and "Link".
Edit and Delete
The following background colors are used to distinguish different types of mark-ups: Highlights, Notes, and Links. Clicking on Highlights will bring up the option to delete the highlight. Clicking on Notes to view, edit, or delete the note. Clicking on Links will go directly to the linked Web page on the internet.
Highlights, Notes and Links can also be deleted by clicking "X" in their listing which can be accessed from the button
in Style L
or (then "Show Notes") in Style s.
Advanced Search
You can find a phrase or multiple separated words in a single book or the entire library (database) on your reading devices. You can also use wildcard * in search inputs to match any characters. For instance, if you type "she walks * beauty" (NO quotation marks), the Viewer can find the ebook page containing the Byron's poem "she walks in beauty".
A search input with the wildcard * will be treated as a phrase, not separated words. Therefore, to find a phrase, simply add the wildcard * at the beginning. Example: typing "lion fox" can find the ebook page containing "lion" and "fox" at different locations, but "*lion fox" can only find the ebook page with "lion" and "fox" together.
In the matched ebook pages, the matched words are highlighted. An ebook page may contain several matches. Clicking a highlighted match will go to the next match.
Zoom
The BSON Books Viewer disables the intrinsic zoom function (e.g., by dragging with 2 fingers) to prevent text flowing outside the screen, which would require horizontal scrolling to read the whole line of text. This situation is unacceptable by most users. The Viewer provides its own method to enlarge text and images.
Text
To magnify text, simply change the font size from the setting. In style L, click on
at the top right. In style s, clicking on will display a menu that contains setting.
Images
Double clicks (or taps) on an image will open the image in a new tab (or window) where you may use the intrinsic method to zoom in or out.
Tables and Equations
As mentioned above, our Viewer does not allow horizontal scrolling. This presents a difficulty for small devices to display large tables or long mathematical equations. Our BSON books are specifically designed to make tables and equations horizontally scrollable. [This feature is not complete yet]
Turn "Screen Pages"
In our books, a chapter or section is typically placed on an "ebook page" which may be several times larger than a screen. All mobile browsers allow you to use a finger to scroll content back and forth as you usually do. In addition to this intrinsic function, the BSON Books Viewer also let you turn "screen pages" on touch-capable devices. Using a finger to touch the left edge of the screen will scroll down the ebook page by the height of a screen. In effect, it turns to the next "screen page". Tap the right edge will turn to the previous screen page.
Add the Viewer to Home Screen
It is recommended that you add the BSON Books Viewer to the home screen, because it will be displayed in FULL SCREEN (the "APP mode") which has more viewing area than the "Browser mode" that typically displays the Web address. This function is available on most laptops and mobile devices. On Apple's products, however, Safari is the only browser that can add Web APP to home screen. Unfortunately, Safari is reluctant to implement a feature required for offline reading. Therefore, on iPhone, you will have to use other browsers such as Google Chrome or Firefox.
Last updated: February 8, 2021