Safari To Go App Reviews

The interface is cleaner, its somewhat faster, if not as fast as the web app. The interface is much better.

The first release of the complete rewrite is as Id wished for. The native app is responsive, looks great, and seems to work well. Im sure people will point out all the things that dont work, but heres what does: - You can read books with ease. Looks like page turning is cached if youre actually reading, flipping pages faster has a slight delay but seems about the same as over the web. - You can read offline. Yes, currently only one book; I believe theyve done this first to see how well it works before scaling it up later on. Compared to browsing in Safari on the iPad, this is definitely superior; and now its compelling enough that "Look I have 14,000 books on my iPad" will win new customers. FYI - Yes, you need to subscribe to use this, but Safari Books Online even without this is totally worth it if youre serious about reading (mostly technical) books.

Definitively a much snappier reading experience over the old v1.x app or via iPad web browser. It seems to cache several pages at a time, so you can more quickly skim chapters. The Offline Bookbag is very buggy. First book I tried downloading stalled and crashed the app. Frequently in Offline mode images/icons will be missing, or it will fail to display pages altogether, just blank page after blank page. Also, unless you switch off your WiFi on the device, it still seems to load pages wirelessly when reading the Offline book. Fixing the Offline bugs and raising the limit to 10 titles, as in v1.x, will earn it 4 stars.

If you are a Safari Books Online subscriber, this is a must have. If youre a developer that buys more than 7 books a year, this subscription is a must have. This essentially opens up pretty much every computer technology book you would want or need.

Bug-laden, slow and released without its full complenent of features, Safari To Go fails even by its own meagre standards. The real disappointment is that it does not even begin to tap the potential of the iPad as a reference device. OReilly remains trapped in the print-book paradigm; little wonder that the dead-tree editions still offer a vastly better user experience. Fail; please start again and think outside the book.

They sure make it hard to find out how much the subscription costs. Too much work so its being deleted.

This application is the only way you can read Safari Books when you dont have Internet connection. Otherwise do yourself a favor and read books on Safari bookss website using Safari browser. This app doesnt have the real book view and only shows books in HTML view which is not very convenient to read. Code and XML are formatted horribly and almost unreadable. Images in offline mode cannot expand cause they need connection (duh!). After reopening a book it positions to beginning of chapter or section, not where I was last reading. So overall, it needs a lot of work to make it a good companion for Safari Books Online web site.

Only one book for offline reading? Because the page load is currently so slow (even though its just HTML) offline reading is the only option to spend more time reading than waiting. Most needed features: - non-HTML version of books - 10 item bookshelf becomes book bag - Also please add 10 item book shelf to dashboard view as this is the most used feature for me. - "Remember me" option, no relogin on every app start - To remove books from bookshelf please enable swipe-to-the-right gesture to remove single item. Keep up the good work.

Basically doesnt work when you have no Internet connection.

I want to like this application, but the user experience is not the best. It is slow and unresponsive, even for books stored off-line. You would expect a tech company to have one of the better apps. Disappointing.

I have access to two Safari subscriptions: one through my public library and the other through a professional society (ACM). Safari-to-Go does not work for either of these, a fact comfirmed by Safari support. I thought it would be useful to access these books from my iPad, but I ended up being disappointed. Oh well...

While the latest versions lack of black screen of death is a nice improvement this application continues to be hobbled by two big problems. 1) the designers were obviously web page designers and it shows. The entire applicatiom feels like someone was told to replicate the web site without thinking about how an app experience should be different. 2) the fact that OReilly is deathly afraid that you will cancel your subscription and still be able to access your offline books. Because of this you will be constantly logging into your account and if you dont have internet access when a login is required you are out of luck. Its sad really because i was really looking forward to this app.

This app still has the "black screen of death" present. Also, "offline" reading doesnt always render graphics/tables etc properly. Most annoying, however, is the inability to zoom (pinch) to read some of the tables/figures presented. As others said, it was not really built for the iPad at all. I look forward to a better version of this to compliment (and justify) our corporate subscription.

This app is a good idea but it still is far from being usable. Version after version the same bug keep reappearing. Often you will simply get the famous "black screen" while trying to start the app or open a book. The offline mode never worked for me while being truly "offline" (no network connectivity). I just get the "black screen". Finally the app keeps asking for credentials as if it couldnt remember your username and password. The online service is great, but the iPad app is simply not ready to be used.

Also noticeably slow at turning pages etc.

Appreciate having the app versus solely browser. Not sure why only WiFi or offline access. Cellular access would make it fabulous.

There are not many requirements for a decent book-reading app, but this one doesnt deliver even on these. In particular, one would expect that the current page be remembered. This app, if you switch to another app and come back, will present a page in the vicinity of where you last left off...perhaps the last-viewed page, or perhaps some different page. Just terrible. Who are the developers / product managers who worked on this?-- Id like to know.

Ive been a subscriber to Safari Books for 10 years now and I was very excited for an iPad app. Sadly, and ironically for a company that publishes books on programming, this app is not very good. It generally feels clunky, not all the features work, and, annoyingly, it doesnt maintain your page position in a book. Every time you come back to the app it jumps to the beginning of the section youre in rather than returning you to the page. Also on the list is the seeming inability to display or scale large images well.

Its nice that theyve included 3G support in this version, but it seems to be pretty much the same as the previous version. Itd be nice to be able to sync notes, etc. I think Ill just stick to the mobile site for now, and download any books I really want to have with me all the time.

Really like the idea of this app, and it actually works the way you want it to... The first time. Then as soon as you sync with iTunes it stops working. Just a blank screen. If you turn off wifi and 3G you would hope you could use the offline bookbag , which you can as long as you did not sync between. I really like this app. I just wish it worked when I need it too. BTW if you uninstall it and then reinstall it works great again... Until you connect to iTunes.