To facilitate off-line viewing, the lecture notes and labs have been collected into ebook format. They are available in both epub and mobi format.
| Formatted for??? | |
|---|---|
| Kindle | mobi |
| Other e-readers | epub |
If your e-reader can handle either epub or mobi formats, you are probably better off trying the epub format. (The mobi format is created by conversion from the epub.)
Of course, there are compromises involved in going to an e-book format.
If you have a black-and-white E-ink device, you won???t see color. (I have added visual markers to my common color based highlighting).
No source code syntax coloring - I use Javascript to do that and e-readers do not, in general, support Javascript.
For similar reasons, I had to render any mathematics in a different matter. Math might not re-scale if you change font size.
Links to material within the ebook should work. Links to material on the original website or elsewhere on the web might not.
Some devices are quite narrow and may have problems rending entire lines of code, to say nothing of items I intended to place side-by-side.
(You may do better to read in landscape mode).
- Oddly, some e-readers for desktop PCs insist on formatting the book into narrow columns no matter how wide you make the window.
1. Ebook Readers
Ebook readers are not as standardized as web browsers, so you may need to experiment with different viewers and viewer settings to find one that works for you.
In particular, there are two general approaches taken by ebook readers:
Some try to follow the formatting directions (CSS) given in the book as faithfully as their rendering engine permits.
Others try to provide a uniform reading experience for all books by overriding the book???s own CSS and substituting a uniform set of fonts, background colors, etc.
This is fine if you are reading typical fiction work, where all you need is things arranged into paragraphs with an occasional section title and picture. But it???s not so good for technical reading if the e-reader decides to ignore highlighted areas of text or to remove all indentation and line breaks from a block of source code.
Some of these readers can be switched back and forth from book formatting mode to reader-preferred mode.
1.1 Comments on Specific E-Readers
All of the following are free.
Some offer related functionality that you may find useful (note taking, bookmarks, synchronization across platforms, etc.)
Follows Book Formatting (CSS)
EPUBReader plugin for Firefox, (Win, OSX, Linux)
Readium plugin for Chrome, (Win, OSX, Linux)
Calibre, an OK e-reader, but more oriented towards organizing large libraries of ebooks (Win, OSX, Linux)
Apple iBooks, (OSX, iOS)
Adobe Digital Editions, (Win, OSX), will not render many of the Unicode characters that I use regularly,
Substitutes Own Formatting
Kindle (device, Win, OSX, iOS, Android, Linux), some versions support switching to book CSS mode
Nook, (Win, OSX)
Moon+, (Android), can be switched to book CSS mode, but has some bugs (e.g., cannot move to next chapter without switching mode back to its own formatting).
fbreader, (Android, Win, OSX, Linux)
Aldiko, (Android)
Feel free to share your experiences with different ebook readers in the Forum.
