How to read O'Reilly ebooks on the iPad that aren't from the iBooks store

In addition to the Apple provided iBooks reader application there are other reading Apps for the iPad. One of my favorites is Ibis Reader which is a web based and HTML5 ebook reader. To start reading O'Reilly books on the iPad you can go to http://oreilly.com/e login, and select a book to read. Then simply tap on the "Read in ibis reader" link and you'll be sent to the Ibis Reader web app. You can read your book online on the normal browsing interface, or go to http://m.ibisreader.com to install the HTML5 Local Storage version so you can read your books offline.

It would be nice if all of the O'Reilly books were available in ePub. As it stands, several are only available in PDF and do not read well on iPad in any app I've tried

Have you tried Good Reader for the iPad? It works with the PDF file great.

@BTSculptor:

Actually, many O'Reilly books are available as ePubs if you buy the ebook.

This looks pretty much perfect.

One problem I've noticed with O'Reilly books in both the iPad Kindle app and in iBooks is that it's very hard to determine what chapter you're in. I often orient myself by going back to the table of contents to find something - but 'going back' is hard in both readers. If there was something in the page header which indicated more context that would be helpful.

Better yet would be something that worked like a stack - when I use a paper technical book I often put my finger where I am as a temporary bookmark and then find something else via the TOC or index.. when I'm done I return to where my finger is (and if where I end up is more useful - I remove my finger from the book. No - I haven't filed a patent for this yet...).

But - it's wonderfully usable in its current state. Thanks.

For the PDF only books I have been using Amazon convert (...@free.kindle.com) service to convert from PDF to AZW format. Then I am at least able to read it in a decent format on my Kindle application.

Thank you for the ePub Tip!

Regarding a PDF reader for iPhone / iPod Touch / iPad
<shameless_plug>
gogoDocs is a Google Docs Reader (separate iPhone and iPad apps) that a friend of mine started in order to solve the problem of being able to take his Google Documents with him even when he doesn't have signal. <insert comment about AT&T in NYC here...> In gogoDocs, once you sign into your Google Docs account, you select which documents you would like to cache to your phone, and they are downloaded in the background. Likewise, when signal is restored and a document is found to be updated, it will download the update in the background.

While he was working on this, he noticed that the PDF renderer included in Cocoa Touch (I think it's from UIWebView, but I can't check right now) is fairly bad, so he rolled his own! In his renderer he has fixed the crashing and poor scrolling that plague most (including the Apple-provided) PDF renderers.

Two final features that I love are the Last Viewed Position bookmark and the Fast-Scrolling Bar. After returning to a document that you navigate away or close gogoDocs, a ribbon floats on the window showing the relative position of your Last Viewing Position. Clicking on this will return you to the page that you were last on. This disappears after a couple of seconds, but can be invoked by a button on the toolbar. Finally, there is a grabbable scrollbar similar to any desktop application when the content exceeds the viewable windows' size. (If you haven't noticed, iPhone 'scrollbars' only show relative position and size, but can't be dragged.)

I apologize for the shameless plug, but I really do love this app. It has become my favorite way to consume PDFs.

(Disclosure: I worked on it, but don't make any money from it's sale.)
</shameless_plug>

I just bought "FileMaker Pro 11" in ebook format.
It offers only "pdf" format for the moment, no ePub format.
So iTunes doesn't accept only-pdf file in its library :-(

I tried the Good Reader app for iPad. It's great.
It's not as efficient as a real ePub book (you know the page turning fx, the browsing with indexes, etc.) but it's workable.

I prefer that than having to fight with the paper book to keep it open when I try to make the exercices on my laptop :-)))

Got as far as downloading and then transferring the ePub to iTunes books on my iMac. Can see it and my other regular books from Mac iTunes OK. However the ebook doesnt sync across to the iPad/iBooks- any clues ? running iTunes 9.2 ...

@Keith turnbull -- You may need to confirm you've told iTunes to sync Books from your computer to your iPad. Connect your iPad and then check out the "Books" tab (see attached screenshot).

HTH,
Andrew

@andrewsavikas - A MobileMe 'ad' window fooled me as it was hiding the iPad settings window you showed in your post - had to move on past that - then the settings were apparently correct but not working so I had to specifically nudge it to sync the e-pub book via 'selected books' but now all synced.

Thanks for taking the time !!

IMHO, iPad app, iAnnotate is the BEST way to read PDFs. iBooks is for reading novels.

Well, so far downloading the eBooks and reading them on the iPad works perfectly. I've tried both ePub (iBooks) and PDFs (GoodReader) and it wors well.

The only exception to this is the eBook "Head First HTML with CSS & XHTML". While I can read it perfectly on the Adobe Reader on my PC it won't display any pictures in the reader(s) on the iPad.

I tried
- Good Reader
- iBooks
- PDF Reader
- Documents to Go

Always the same problem. Same goes for downloading it multiple times from different computers. As I said, all the other 11 eBooks from O'Reilly I bought work well - just not that one.

Anybody got an idea for a solution?

For Sean

All of the iPad book readers have a bookmark solution.

In Kindle, tap the upper right corner to get a bookmark (or clear one). To go to a previous bookmark, tap the bottom edge and then tap the open book icon. Select My Notes & Marks and select the bookmark.

In iBooks, tap the upper right corner bookmark icon to set or clear a bookmark. To go to a bookmarked page, tap the bullet list icon on the upper left then the bookmarks tab. Select the bookmark.

In GoodReader, tap the open book icon on the bottom edge then select bookmarks on the bottom edge of the pop-up window. Select Add Bookmark to add one. You can even name the bookmark or leave the default page reference. To remove a bookmark is a little bit cumbersome - once in the pop-up window, select edit. Select the - sign next to the bookmark to be deleted and then confirm the delete.

Hope this helps. If nothing else, keeps your finger from getting paper cuts.

The best app I've found is GoodReader to read Ebooks downloaded as PDF's and it works especially well with large PDF files. It also fully supports Google Docs and Dropbox.

Thanks for the tips! I've just bought an "old" iPad v1, and thanks to you I can now read all of my favourites tech books.