Latest Update To Intelligent E-Reading App Marvin Puts You In Command
May 7, 2013
Three months ago, I did a Shelf Control feature on the "intelligent" e-reading app Marvin for iOS on the occasion of its big 1.2 update. Since then, the app has been receiving more significant updates, including its recently released 1.5 update.
Marvin 1.5 brings a number of notable improvements, of which none is perhaps more notable than support for custom in-book menu commands.
Beginning with Marvin 1.5, you can enable commands to, say, copy text, define or translate words, or launch other apps. Go to Marvin's setting section and select the Menu tab to set up your preferred commands.
Preset commands are available for many popular services including: Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Google Translate, Merriam-Webster online dictionary, Bing image search, Google Maps, Goodreads quote search, Twitter, Facebook, ABBYY Lingvo, Tweetbot, Google Chrome, Rambler, Duden, Nebulous, and IMDb.
But guess what. You can actually create your own commands. And to help you do so, there's now a "Custom menu commands" section in the in-app tutorial.
If you can't see the video embedded above, please click here.
In addition to custom in-book menu commands, the following enhancements are included in Marvin 1.5:
Compatible with iPad running iOS 5.0 or later, Marvin 1.5 is available now in the App Store for free. [gallery link="file" order="DESC"]
- Standard in-book menus use icons.
- Removed experimental iOS dictionary support.
- Added Wiktionary online dictionaries for en, de, es, fr, hi, it, ja, kr, nl, pl, ru, and zh.
- Finer line spacing increments.
- Share > Web opens in Marvin’s built-in web browser instead of Safari.
- Improved OPDS searching. Marvin can now search in several new catalogs such as COPS, Project Gutenberg, Internet Archive and Feedbooks.
- Marvin remembers the “last formatting” used globally. The default formatting applied to a newly opened book doesn’t depend on a previously opened book existing.
- The Deep View and in-book web browser allows you to pin web pages even if they’re still loading.
- Improved font resizing compatibility (buttons “A+” and “A-” in web browser)
- Option to turn off cover animation in home screen (setting is in iPad’s settings not Marvin’s settings).
- New monospaced font - “Liberation Mono”.
- Updated some text in the OPDS favorite box to make the process clearer.
- Updated some “about” text.
- Some other bug fixes.
