Lucifox
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Lucifox is a free and open source add-on for the browser Mozilla Firefox that organizes, saves and manages ebooks, supporting EPUB 3 and EPUB 2 formatted books without DRM and retrieval of books from on-line book catalogues using the Open Publication Distribution System (OPDS). It is part of the Lucidor suite of free and open source ebook software made by the Swedish developer Ordbrand.[1]
Contents
History
The Lucifox ebook reader began as a continuation of the previous XUL-based, cross-platform and standalone ebook reader Lucidor, and version 0.8.1 was released on February 7, 2011.[2] Translators made Lucifox available in several languages, and development picked up in the latter half of 2012, leading to a not backwardly compatible new branch as of version 0.9.5 due to changes in Firefox itself and a new license change as of version 0.9.7 to GNU GPL v3.[3]
Features
Lucifox opens in the main browser window and displays some on-line book catalogues, from which the reader can search for and download books. The list of book catalogues can be changed and extended by the user. It displays a book to the reader using the browser's main window, one book per browser tab. The book can be on-line or saved off-line on a personal bookshelf folder. Lucifox remembers where the reader stopped reading, so reading can be resumed at a later time. The reader navigates the book's content by scrolling up or down a page, move forward or backward using arrow buttons, or use the left panel to traverse the book's hypertext index. It supports annotations that can point to several places in the text, and these can be exported into an annotation file and imported into another reader's copy of the book for sharing notes. Lucifox can also search for terms in the book text, with hits being displayed in the left panel as clickable hyperlinks.
Lucifox benefits from Firefox's support for a large number of open web standards, which in addition to regular text makes it possible to display ebooks with advanced content often found in textbooks, like mathematics, music notation, chemistry and even interactive 3D, e.g. letting the reader rotate a chemical molecule. It can be used to let a reader compile their own ebook from online sources, as it comes with a book generator. Lucifox is available on all regular computers where Firefox is available, among these are GNU/Linux, Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X. Once installed, it is available from the browser's extension bar, indicated by a red star, which can be moved by the user, or from the Tool menu. However, since Lucifox is built as an add-on using XUL, it is not compatible with Firefox on Android and at present there is no Lucifox ebook reader for Firefox on Android add-on.
Standards
Lucifox implements the open ebook standards EPUB 3 and EPUB 2 as published by the IDPF, and the open standard OPDS for searching, finding and retrieving ebooks from online book catalogues. Supporting EPUB 3 means that Lucifox is able to display scalable SVG vector illustrations, as well as PNG and JPEG bitmap images.
Licensing
Lucifox is licensed under the GNU GPL v 3.
Promotion
Lucifox is part of the Lucidor suite of ebook software by the Swedish developer Ordbrand, which includes the original Lucidor ebook reader, the Mediawiki extension Luciwik to add EPUB 3 export of articles and OPDS catalogue to Mediawiki installations, and the Moodle Book module add-on Lucimoo for importing and exporting EPUB 3 from Moodle.
Reception
At present, Lucifox has been downloaded 4081 times and given 11 reviews, given an average of 5 stars of 7 possible at the Mozilla Firefox add-on page.[4] In articles, Lucifox is often compared to EPUBReader,[5][6] a similar add-on, which is not free and open source, but available at no charge too.
Release history
- Version 0.9.7. Released April 5, 2013. 315.7 KB. Works with Firefox 18.0 and later, SeaMonkey 2.15 and later. Source code released under GNU General Public License, version 3.0
- Version 0.9.6. Released February 9, 2013. 308.9 KB. Works with Firefox 18.0 and later, SeaMonkey 2.14 and later.
- Version 0.9.5. Released January 16, 2013. 281.2 KB. Works with Firefox 18.0 and later, SeaMonkey 2.14 and later.
- Version 0.9.4. Released December 22, 2012. 281.0 KB. Works with Firefox 3.0 and later, SeaMonkey 2.0 and later.
- Version 0.9.2. Released November 27, 2012. 277.7 KB. Works with Firefox 3.0 and later, SeaMonkey 2.0 and later.
- Version 0.9.0. Released November 19, 2012. 277.9 KB. Works with Firefox 3.0 and later, SeaMonkey 2.0 and later.
- Version 0.8.9. Released October 15, 2012. 273.5 KB. Works with Firefox 3.0 and later, SeaMonkey 2.0 and later.
- Version 0.8.8. Released September 20, 2012. 288.8 KB Works with Firefox 3.0 and later, SeaMonkey 2.0 and later.
- Version 0.8.5. Released May 27, 2012. 285.7 KB. Works with Firefox 3.0 and later, SeaMonkey 2.0 and later.
- Version 0.8.4. Released December 5, 2011. 285.7 KB. Works with Firefox 3.0 and later, SeaMonkey 2.0 - 2.0.*. Adds basic support for EPUB 3.Adds a Spanish translation.
- Version 0.8.3. Released June 12, 2011. 277.5 KB. Works with Firefox 3.0 and later, SeaMonkey 2.0 - 2.0.*. Keyboard shortcuts has been added.
- Version 0.8.2. Released April 6, 2011. 276.5 KB. Works with Firefox 3.0 and later, SeaMonkey 2.0 - 2.0.*.
- Version 0.8.1. Released February 7, 2011. 275.5 KB. Works with Firefox 3.0 and later, SeaMonkey 2.0 - 2.0.*.
Platform support
Lucifox ebook reader is an add-on for Firefox and works on the same operating systems and architectures, except Firefox for Android, which does not use XUL for add-ons.
System requirements
See Firefox.
See also
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References
Further reading
At this time, there is little beyond the Lucifox manual.
