Bookshelf Hack 10.4.1 + Redeem Codes

Over all the app is great. I have been able to down textbooks for school. And I can rent them at a lower cost rather than purchasing them outright. The app so far syncs pretty well between devices. However the major flaw I see with the app is you cannot highlight, or make notes. This is a basic feature and one of the primary reasons to download a digital book app on your phone or tablet. The company only gives the option to make notes (notecards) or highlight text on the website on a computer. The whole point in downloading the app on a tablet is so you don’t have to take your laptop with you everywhere. Being able to highlight text on your textbooks is a basic feature that one looks for in a digital book app. It was real let down when I found out I was unable to do so. Whether you are using an Apple Pencil or your finger you should be able to mark on the pages.

Update, the developer reached out regarding the issue I had from my review. Gave instructions on how to address what I needed in the app. I appreciated the feed back on the help. Though done slightly differently than the website version. Indicated to press down on item needed to highlight and the option would come up. I attempted to do so and it has worked. I will continue to use this app.

This textbook not only has extremely interesting material, but it makes finding all of the key terms and facts extremely easy which saves so much time and effort. The AP Exam Tips on the side of every page are also extremely useful to study with and to help me prepare for the AP Exam. I also love the way the pages are organized and how the paragraphs are properly separated with not too much writing in between. The images and captions also better my understanding of the specific topic I am concentrating on, and I personally learn well from visual aids as well. This book also loads extremely quickly and I can easily access it on the go, when I am not home for instance. The information in this book additionally makes it fun to read and the text isn’t overly analyzed or boring either. I looking forward to using this book to assist in my academic studies as well as my AP exam.

It has been a really long time since I needed to study for anything. Accessing E technology for my textbook is great! I am using on my IPad with ease. Access anywhere and no heavy book to carry around or figure where you last left it. The only problem I’m having is controlling the highlighter function. The page moves really easy while I try to highlight and wants to move the entire screen/page. I don’t have a consistent technique yet to make that stop happening and is a tad frustrating. I have 800 pages to go so I suspect I’ll get better. An accidental swipe left or right takes you to the next chapter and once you go back it drops you back at the top of chapter and you have to try to remember where you were and scrolllllll to get back easier if you can recall a page number to enter and jump to that page (Any tips? For those 2 issues ) Creating flash cards is fantastic !! Quick access to study anytime. I’ll need to reference this book for life so I hope future access won’t be an issue. Crossing fingers as I sit for testing in May 😬

The main benefit of this app is that it is more mobile than the website. However, this app is buggy and is missing some basic features that completely remove the mobile advantage. They force you to frequently type your email and password just to use the app (there is no way to stay logged in), and the “read aloud” function is terrible. The low quality of the voice on my device is understandable because they use your device’s built-in speech engine, but they don’t set up their books to be read correctly by speech engines. Many words on the page are broken into their individual letters, resulting in words being spelled out one letter at a time. All footnotes are announced for every page, so I hope you enjoy having your book interrupted about once a minute to hear about all the legal restrictions on how you can use the book. On top of that, some of the text is skipped and other text that wasn’t even there before is added in. Divisions between chapters are not clearly marked, leaving you confused about the context.

Why would I ever decide to use this app when I can use the larger screen of one of many public computers that are increasingly available to everyone, or my laptop which is easy to bring anywhere?

This app absolutely ruins the one great thing about ebooks: the ability to instantly search through them and find what you want. Oh sure you can search in this app but it’s just awful. For instance if you search for a two-worded phrase it will give you every single instance of both the words, which is less than helpful. There doesn’t appear to be any way to search for a phrase at all. The fact that this is geared toward text books and people who are going to need to search through the text on the regular is just ridiculous.

The flash cards are a nice addition, though you’re severely limited in how you can format them. For whatever reason they only allow you one line to work with and you can’t space down to create a larger card. Everywhere throughout the app it claims you can hover over any diagram or sketch and add it to a flash card. I have yet to have that work. Then, say you messed up a flash card, editing them is a nightmare. I have 40 flash cards for one unit but when I hover over the one I want to edit I get nothing. No option to edit it. My option is to delete and start over.

It’s a shame the publishers force people to use an app this bad for their product.

The pharmacology book I bought is in ePub format, so I don’t see why I couldn’t just download it on iBooks to begin with. I would assume they’re pretty good about not allowing users to share books. I can’t think of another reason you’d force users into a proprietary app that is free. Reading the reviews, it looks as though the developers do update this app because I saw an option for night mode which someone had wanted. Here’s what I’d like:
1. Better highlighting, especially with Apple Pencil. This hold and drag business is ridiculous
2. Changed chapter/page format. Each chapter being a page, I can see where that would sound convenient in a meeting but if your chapter is 30+ pages long it’s rather inconvenient to keep scrolling.
That’s all so far. Thanks!
Oh last thing-people are on here rating 5 stars because you can read the book offline with the app-you bought this book. You should be able to view it anywhere, just as you would a physical book. That’s not an amazing feature, that’s basic ebooks. I hope my concerns are addressed but either way I appreciate fewer natural resources being used to make a textbook that I have to have anyway.

The biggest gripe I have is that certain sections of the book appear to be pictures instead of accessible text. It’s as if all they did was scan the book and stitch the pictures together in an app. When you attempt to highlight text in these “picture“ sections, it doesn’t let you highlight. Instead, the app acts as if you’re trying to pick up a picture and move it somewhere else. The only thing I’m actually able to highlight is section titles and some information in the section reviews. All of the content within the chapter is a series of pictures I can’t do anything with. Don’t get me wrong I’m satisfied with the fact that I’m able to get all of this information for cheap compared to purchasing the full book, but if they are advertising certain capabilities in this application they should be usable throughout the entire book.

For me to give four stars, the entire book would need to be in a unified format of accessible text. For me to get five stars, the book would have to be more interactive than simply QR codes and a few videos.

UPDATE: The developers reached out to me. They made the swipe feature to go between chapters a little more sticky so normal scrolling through the current chapter doesn’t bounce between chapters. It made a HUGE difference. I read 2 chapter (around 60 pages) and it didn’t happen one time. Kudos to their team for being so responsive. Thank you! 🥳🥳🥳

I love having this access to my textbooks, but the app is infuriating. There aren’t pages to turn like in a Kindle. The chapter eternally scrolls on. If you swipe left or right, it takes you between chapters. Slow scrolling while you’re reading has to be perfectly straight or BOOM you’re in the next chapter. I lose SO MUCH TIME finding where I was because the screen doesn’t lock onto what you’re reading. After a while, I inevitably swipe not perfectly straight and IT HAPPENS AGAIN! Put arrows to go between chapters and lock the scrolling feature.

I love the concept of this app, the flash cards and highlighter work great… However, the fact that you can’t access any of the flowcharts or self checks that are offered in some of my college books without going to the online version is frustrating. And the online site that I have to use for the books I have tries to force my iPad into opening the app. Literally every time I turn a page on the online version it tries to redirect me to the app and it’s extremely frustrating and overall a poor collaboration between the two platforms. This is something that should be addressed. We should be able to completely download the book onto a e-reader device and then still be able to use it, not only have access to certain parts of it without internet… makes me want to go back to 20 lbs of textbooks, at least I can answer the questions in those books and then check the back to make sure I got the answers right…

The reading app is excellent. Layout is made with an effort to mirror the actual book as much as possible. Appreciate the fact that there is more that one color highlight, although there could be more than just two colors. Second thing that could be better is the frame for viewing tables. I would appreciate being able to zoom in and out with a finger pinch. And lastly, the « narrator» needs to sound much more like an actual human reading. As for now it is like a robot reading sequences of sentences. Nonetheless, scrolling down the text is easy and there is no hopping from page to page; it is rather a continuous thread when it comes to any particular chapter. And by only sliding left or right you are already in the next chapter. This keeps different chapters closer, and saves time.
If improvement is made to based on the preceding fallouts, I think this is can become the leader in reading apps (I have already tried both Inkling and kindle).