Is there an in-browser, Flash-free method to view ebooks from Adobe Content Server?
We currently offer a library of c.50k specialist ebooks via a feature-rich "ereader" web-app (HTML5/JS based with various fallbacks down to IE7).
However, management want to be able to offer "downloadable" ebooks for "mobile devices". By this they mean a file that the user can download and read offline. Adobe Content Server is fine for this (if a little expensive, and a little hated by the users, but unfortunately it's becoming an industry standard...)
OK so if we adopt ACS, making downloadable-for-offline-reading a possibility, what are the options for online reading, assuming we want to use ACS for everything and not just offline? In other words ... is there an in-browser reader for Adobe Content Server?
Flash is not a possibility as a) a lot of the users us iPads (yes for online reading too) and b) a lot of the users have to use IE7 with no Flash installed (the NHS is a major customer).
I realise I might be asking for the impossible but I thought it would be worth hearing peoples' thoughts.
Please don't advise me not to use DRM, it's not my choice and I have already advised against using it. However we are contractually obliged by our suppliers to have "a DRM solution" for offline reading.
If there was a widely-available alternative solution to Adobe Content Server I'd be interested to hear about it. I have already integrated ACS once (version 3) and don't really look forward to repeat the experience...
There are a number of reader apps which support ACS, such as Sony Reader. Your readers can use those apps (after "sideloading" your books, a process which differs from reader to reader) to read the ACS books. I don't know of any browser-based reader, but it seems to me that the apps (which exist for all major platforms) should get the job done for you. These apps all keep local copies of books and work just fine offline.
Related
Broad, sweeping question here...
Assume you have built an enterprise level framework with some rich client in the .Net (Microsoft) sphere, with a WCF back end. Now, imagine that that enterprise framework's UI technology is being deprecated in favour of UWP.
The choices for a front end replacement basically are: UWP, Web (HTML), or some other rich client technology.
How would you go about the decision making process?
I personally lean toward a rich client where the user base is a captive user base. I mean, where the users' IT department is happy to install the necessary runtime environment on the machines, etc. This is usually not a problem with Microsoft technologies, and this won't be a problem in about 10 years when organizations roll out Windows 10.
But, people are telling me these days that web has come a long way. People are telling me that JavaScript frameworks are becoming very sophisticated, and that low level JavaScript for basic data binding and the like is mostly unnecessary.
I have really been turned off by web solutions like ASP in the past, but I do understand that technology has moved forward, and I do understand that Microsoft have been working on ASP.Net v Next which might actually be good?
The question is not so much what would you opt for? But, what factors would you take in to account to decide which platform to go for?
Opnion based answer here...
In a decision to adopt a particular tech for any project lies in many factors. I can cite two majors for your particular scenario.
1 - Client adoption. It's easy for the customers to use/install it? They need to pay some sort of license? Can it run in all platforms/devices the customer already own?
2 - Market adoption. It's easy for you co-workers to adopt it? It's hard to find/hire experienced/hardened developers? We need to pay some kind of license? Can I trust it ill be a long lived technology?
The answer to your question can be HTML.
Not only it is already got a lot of momentum in market, it ill take years to change it even if today someone (big like MS or Google) put some new (better) stuff on the table.
Also if someone on MS marketing dep say next week Universal Windows Platform or WinRT must die it ill die (like Silverlight). So Im not adopting some new technology just because some big player told me to do it.
Yes web has come a long way indeed. You can do a lot of amazing things just with JS+HTML+CSS those days. Also the right usage/architecture of it ill allow you to put your app running in PCs, Tablets and Mobiles (at a minimum cost to port between devices) and capable in running in anything can access internet.
I suggest you to catch up and learn a lot about webservices, Json, JS libraries like JQuery, Sammy and some nice stuff like Knockout, SPA, Angular, Node, etc.
Edit, answer to comments
To not start a chatty comment I'll respond here. Yes your questions and comments brings interesting questions. To let it readable for posterity both of us can edit answer and question to organize it.
Silverlight. How not love it? In special after strugling with flash. It's a shame MS pulled the plug (die in hell MS CEOs). When MS let it to die I was planning a big web app SL was my first choice. Why I changed my mind? Well 2 years to develop that app and at the end how much browser ill get along supporting it? The SL community is great, the tool is great but browsers can just say, Hey tomorrow there's no guarantee it keep working.
.Net and MS platforms. I'm a .Net developer. I adopted it since beta, first to work with winforms (in a previous life I was a proud Delphi developer). After a while started to work with web. I also worked in classical ASP (bad times) and loved .Net ASP from start.
You can run .Net apps in almost any PC in the planet today. Not exactly true for all mobiles/gadgets. For browsers pure HTML+JS+CSS ill to better because it's lightweight (done right). Also we can move a lot of thing to client side and just let it hit the server only when necessary. .Net apps can do that, sure, but ill never be light as a tailored HTML+JS+CSS.
In fact I believe you can do anything with .Net and you can do amazing things if you got a few good developers in your team. But depending on the project it ill do better (and cheaper) in HTML or PHP or Ruby or Java, etc.
In fact at a previous shop, with both PHP and .Net teams we found (after 1 year study, metrics, lots of projects) small projects are better done in PHP, larger ones in .Net (if I remember a medium project can be 4k to 6k men/hours).
The point here is. You really must read a lot about HTML, CSS, JS, SPA, Angular, etc. Bringing to live a big and shinning web app is challenging today not because what we can do (we can do anything) but how we can do. DDD, MVC, MVVM. Testing framework, etc. Man Node is the future (the concept at least).
Web developing really changed in the last years and with it the clients and users expectations. Today no one ill wait for more than 2 secs for a page to load. Everybody wants usability to be at the top of the table from project scratch. You app must be responsive, etc. (not using Dilbertian management buzz words here for the sake of it. Just stating usability is that important today).
And don't forget everyone wants it to be beatifull (from a graphical designer point of view) even if it's a dull B2B supposed to be used only by cave mens.
Even if you stick to a classical .Net app learn about the (many) options, that can bring a new wider perspective.
I have decided to answer this question here because we've had a lot more time to investigate and look at different options. The original question turned out to be a bit of a furphy. Pure UWP and Web are not the only options. There is also a Xamarin Forms as an option which includes UWP, Android, and iOS. As a personal preference, I am leaning toward using Xamarin Forms as a client instead of any other development platform because it supports three OSs out of the box: Windows 10, iOS, and Android.
I believe the answer to the question is: you should only develop a web app if you need to. Does your user base consist of people who will mostly prefer a browser over apps? Are your potential users likely to want to avoid downloading an app? Is your app very simple, and you want people to be able to dive in very quickly? Are you able to get away without access to things like the camera, location and push notifications? If you can answer yes to these things, then I think you should go for HTML 5/JavaScript. If however, your user base is comfortable downloading apps, and you think that your app will require a UI more sophisticated than most browser apps, I'd recommend looking at Xamarin Forms as the preferred option. We've had very good success with Xamarin Forms so far, and the UWP version of our Xamarin Forms app has turned out just as good as our first stab at a UWP app.
Note: I should give Web Assembly (http://webassembly.org/) an honorable mention here. This technology is being considered in all the big tech organisations like Microsoft, Apple, and Google. One day, it may make deployment of native apps in a browser great again.
I'm starting some research on skype programming. Is there one technologie for skype plugins or are there multiple frameworks or apis?
I'd like to make a plugin where user from my database can communicate with each other (video, audio, chat) over skype without seeing each others' real skype id's - is it possible? (I guess yes, I tried skycandy a couple years ago and it was actually the same)
any hints for realization?
primary platform would be windows, but maybe android/ios as well (are mobile versions plugin enabled?)
Is skype a good choice for the requirements or is there a better solution for a small project without budget?
Skype offers an API for its Desktop clients, Desktop API and an SDK for you build your own client.
The Desktop API is in maintenance mode and doesn't support newer features in the client and has a number of known bugs.
SkypeKit is fully supported but doesn't currently support Multi Part Video, at the time of writing.
Neither of these technologies can be used on mobile devices, in the case of SkypeKit its specifically prohibited in the licence terms, and you may never obscure the sending or receiving parties Skype name as this is prohibited.
For additional info please see http://developer.Skype.com
Allen Smith
Community Manager
Skype Developer
I am going to create a mobile book store for a very specific group of people. Since ePub is just compressed HTML, it's not secure enough. Anyone can access it if I extract the files to SD card. I don't want users copy the E-books around because I sell them for money.
I can parse the file and save it to a database. But I wondered if there is standard way for managing ePub DRM?
Thanks,
Your best bet would be to use a DRM server solution. Adobe Content Server 4 is the leading system for this, used by Google Books, Barnes & Noble etc. though it can be a bit expensive to purchase a license and setup your own server. You can also use a SaaS service like EditionGuard to use it cost effectively, though you'll be using a shared environment in that case which may or may not fit your needs.
The Readium LCP DRM is on the market since 2017 and is now deployed in most countries. It is non-proprietary and does not break the accessibility of EPUB ebooks. It is replacing the obsolete Adobe DRM, step by step.
See https://www.edrlab.org/readium-lcp/ and more especially https://www.edrlab.org/readium-lcp/certified-apps-servers/ for more info.
What kind of protection you are looking for?
just watermarking because epub DRM is hard.
Password protection.
Encrypted files.
From what i know you are trying to do something which is in the area of R&D plus challeging, at one side you will need to develop content encryption engine and other side a reader which will read encrypted content, these readers should also be supported in major os and mobile plateforms.
How can I integrate Voice over IP into my asp.net website so that user's can speak to each other through the site?
Thanks!
Without extra software (plugins) I don't believe you can at the moment with any mainstream browser (you probably would not want your computer microphone available to your browser as default for security reasons also, although plugins tend to get around this by asking for permission to access the microphone and camera).
Note that it is a non-trivial exercise to make this work reliably due to the need to work around NATS and firewalls - Skype and the new Google Voice chat feature for example dedicate a lot of their effort to achieving this reliably. If you decide to use a plugin it would be worth checking it handles this well (along with general voice quality). See the link below for some background: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Session_Traversal_Utilities_for_NAT.
I am giving to upload functionality, i want that files must be scaned on Server side, Before they uploaded and then they are are saved on that server.
Is there any free available antivirus engines to scan the attachment on the server?
Thanks
You can't exactly "scan" the file on the client. However, some manipulation is possible, determined by the client security settings.
I believe it is quite difficult as browsers implement such functionality differently (Internet Explorer could use ActiveX scripting for example).
You could try to look into that perhaps.
Regarding free antivirus, I believe Google has the answer ;)
But seriously, Avast and AVG are both providing home users with free versions of their antivirus. Since you haven't said anything about your purpose of the server, I don't know whether using the free versions is legal.
If you're willing to pay a bit for a AV solution, I can recomend NOD32. That said, I should mention that I have no experience with the server version. I use the workstation version, which is very light weight.
Sure, depending on what virus-checking software you're going to use for the scan -- for example, the commercial product metascan offers an API to integrate your programs with many different commercial anti-virus products.
Before uploading is hard; you could rather check it after upload but before making it available for download. To do so you can use online antivirus services - but it's a very timeconsuming solution, and you should certainly use a separate thread or service - or scan it yourself, using one of the many available antivirus engines (a few of them are free, but the others usually cost very few, less than $10 per year).
EDIT: the most famous (for me, at least) open source antivirus tool is ClamWin, which is released under GPL. For free (as in free beer) engines, I can only suggest to search "free antivirus engine" or the like, not because I'm lazy but because I've never used one and don't feel comfortable suggesting things I don't know.