Ubooquity 1.7.0, with OPDS and comics metadata
14 december 2014 Release
Ubooquity 1.7.0 is available.
This upgrade will trigger a complete rescan of your of comics and ebooks files. You will not lose your settings, but depending on the size of your collection, it could take time.
If you use the "Modern" theme, you will have to download the new version of this theme on the themes page.
New features
- Comics Metadata : Ubooquity now reads and displays comics metadata in the ComicRack format. You can write such metadata in your comics with applications like ComicRack (obviously) or ComicTagger.
- Better PDF support : Ubooquity now embeds two new libraries which will improve PDF support, especially for documents containing JPG2000 images or using cryptography features (not fully encrypted PDF though). They will no longer generate errors when scanned and their cover will be displayed correctly.
- OPDS feeds : You can activate OPDS feeds in the "advanced" option of Ubooquity. Your feeds will be available at the following addresses (port and IP are just examples):
http://10.0.0.1:2202/opds-comics
http://10.0.0.1:2202/opds-books
These feeds support authentication through HTTP Basic Authentication (same credentials as the ones you already use). This authentication method is not as secure as the one already used by Ubooquity, so be carefull if you use OPDS feeds on an open network without activating the SSL/HTTPS feature.
I have done some tests with a few ebooks/comics readers with OPDS support. Unfortunately the OPDS specification is not followed at 100% by all the applications. Here are the results of my tests:
Note that the the "Comics online reading" column corresponds to a feature not supported by the original OPDS standard but is an extension developped for Ubooquity and Challenger Comics Viewer. More details here.
Miscellaneous
- Added an option to automatically minimize Ubooquity interface at startup.
- Added an option to hide empty folders.
- Improved ebooks metadata display (publication date, language, file format).
- Trailing slashes and backslashes are now automatically removed when entering shared folder paths in the web administration page.
- Fixed a rare bug which added a pink overlay on some comics images.
- Fixed a bug on folder images: Ubooquity now always uses the first image found in the directory or its subdirectories.
The improved comics online reader development is still in progress.
Ubooquity 1.6.0, with SSL support (HTTPS)
26 october 2014 Release
Ubooquity 1.6.0 is available.
[UPDATE] If you use the "Modern" theme, you will have to download the new version of this theme on the themes page.
New features
- SSL support : You can now access your files in a more secure way by using the HTTPS protocol instead of HTTP. To do that you will need to get a SSL certificate (either by buying one or generating a self-signed one), generate a Java keystore and configure Ubooquity to use it.
- Reverse proxy : If you want to use reverse proxy, you can now choose the prefix which will be added at the beginning of every URL served by Ubooquity.
- "New comics/books" links : two new links on the home page which will take you to a page containing the latest comics and books added to your collection.
Miscellaneous
- Added an option to disable files auto scan at startup (if you want your files scanned only when you press the "scan" button).
- Failed logon attempts for the webadmin page are now displayed on a single line so that they are easier to parse with fail2ban.
- Log files rotate when they reach 1 MB instead of 5 MB.
- Removed session limitation restricting a user to a single active session (you were automatically logged out of a device when logging into another). You can now have several sessions on different devices at the same time.
- Removed port range restriction (ports under 1024 are now authorized).
- Fixed advanced preferences page in webadmin.
- Fixed several bugs related to user rights management.
- Fixed a bug preventing the comic pages displayed in the online reader from being wider than 1200 pixels.
- Fixed online reader keyboard shortcuts in Chrome.
- Fixed a bug which was degrading perfomances of the online reader when a scan was in progress.
No OPDS support yet, and the online reader has not been improved much either. But work is in progress and these features/improvements will probably be delivered in the 1.7.0 version.
A forum to exchange ideas and questions around Ubooquity
02 september 2014 General
The ubooquity website now has a dedicated forum, hosted on UserEcho.
This forum is meant to gather your feedback (questions, ideas, bugs...) in a single place so that discussions between users can take place more easily than in the comments section of the news. It also has a few interesting features:
- A voting system that will help me to know among the feature I'm asked to implement the ones that are the most popular.
- A status label ("planned", "started", "declined") displayed on feature requests that will give you a better visibility over the future of the application.
- An integrated search engine to easily find topics when looking for informations.
Private messages can also be directly sent to me through the forum. I will keep the contact page online for now, but they are redundant.
The only drawback: you will have to sign in to the forum before being able to post or send a message. But you can do that using a lot of different account provider (Google, Yahoo, Microsoft, OpenID...) or by directly creating a UserEcho account, so it should not be a big problem.
Go to the forum by clicking the "Forum" link in the top menu or the "Feedback" label on the right side of your screen.
Ubooquity 1.5.0, now with themes and better PDF support
23 june 2014 Release
Ubooquity 1.5.0 is available.
New features
- Better PDF support: Cover rendering is now working for all types of PDF files (image-only PDF as well as text+images PDF files)
- PDF in the "books" section can be read online, like comics. Ubooquity now uses two different PDF rendering engines: one for comics (image-only PDF), one for books (text+images PDF). Depending on the type of your PDF file, be careful to put it in the right section to have a correct display when reading them online (if you just download them, it makes no difference).
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Ubooquity now supports themes. A new lighter theme can be donwloaded on the Themes page. This pages also explains how to install and create new themes.
Miscellaneous
- Improved image quality on high pixel density devices
- Miscellaneous performance improvements
- Better user access logging (see this tutorial on how to customize your logs)
Ubooquity 1.4.0, with mobi and PDF ebooks support
11 april 2014 Release
Ubooquity 1.4.0 is here.
Here is a list of what has changed.
New features
- Support for mobi files. Let me know how it works for you, I have not many mobi files to test this feature.
- Support for PDF files in the books section. The difference with PDF as comics is that PDF books get their metadata displayed (although I did not find many PDF with proper metadata) and their cover rendered instead of being just a extracted picture.
Miscellaneous
- Web administrator password field characters are now hidden.
- Debug mode has been removed as the bug it was supposed to help solve (partially displayed covers) was not really a bug.
- Default display mode for books is now "by folder" (instead of "flat"), same as the one used for comics. The difference with comics default display mode was confusing.
- IP address of users trying to login are now written to the log file, to help identify potential attacks.
- The number displayed on folders (in "folder" mode) now recursively includes all files in the folder and in its subfolders.
- The number displayed on foldersis now displayed even if over 99.
- Added a loading icon between pages when reading comics.
- Slightly improved layout on smaller screens.
