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Hi this is Gary with MacMost Now. On today's episode let's look at different fonts and
theme adjustments that you can make in iBooks.
So here we are in iBooks on my iPad Mini. Now if you go into a book, a regular book
not a textbook, you have various different options for reading text. You can see here
the default. The text here is rather small and you can see there is a little bit of a
theme. You can look around the edges and you can see it looks like you are looking at pages
in a book. The background isn't pure white either. It is just kind of off white like
pages in a book.
You can adjust all of this stuff by tapping on those two letter aA's at the top of the
screen. Here you have a bunch of different adjustments. Of course you've got your brightness
adjustment. You are not going to see that here on my screen shot. But more importantly
you've got the font size adjustment.
Now before I change the font size look at the bottom of the screen. You can see I'm
looking at page 10 of 180. Watch what happens when I increase the font size. You can see
now I'm looking at page 10 of 209. What will happen is that the page count will recalculate
each time I do this. If I go to a font size that I have not tried before you can see that
it doesn't appear right away at the bottom. It actually has to recalculate itself. You
can see it doing it there at the bottom. Now it is page 10 out of 252. So I'm going to
shrink it back down here to that size. So you can adjust the size to get something that
is comfortable for you to read. For instance I find on my iPad Mini I want to make it a
little larger than I do on my standard size iPad.
Now the next thing we can do is we can go to fonts. Here you have several choices of
fonts. These are all very nice fonts to read. I have trouble choosing between them because
I find them all pretty good. So you have the original set there but you can go through
all the different ones and see how each one of these looks. Some of them are a little
bit smaller and can fit more words on the screen thus the page count at the bottom of
the screen is going to recalculate when you use them just like it does when you change
the size. Let's go back to original there.
Now let's get into some new stuff. If you go to themes there, this is different now
in the latest version of iBooks that just came out and this is with iOS 6 and the latest
version of iBooks, iBooks 3, you get some different options.
So the first thing you get are three different color type options. So you get white, sepia,
and night. So sepia gives you a slightly color there for the background. Maybe a bit easier
on the eyes. Also night kind of reverses the entire thing. This is great for reading in
the dark because with this you kind of have this bright light shining in your face. This
will make the room a little darker and will make it easier to read and could be easier
on your spouse lying next to you at night too. You've got those options.
In addition you've got three options for kind of styles. The book option is the one we have
been looking at where you see the edges of the book around the edges of the screen. But
you can go to full screen and it gets rid of that. It is just a white screen. So a lot
of people may like this a little bit better and it works with the different color themes
there as well. So there really is not much of an advantage to having it set to book over
full screen. You can see that it does fit more on the screen if you switch to full screen
and you just get a little less of the style there.
Now what's very new is this scrolling feature. So you go to scroll and now you aren't using
pages at all. You actually are scrolling up and down through the text. You can see the
dots are on the right side of the screen rather than at the bottom. It still gives you a page
count at the bottom so you have kind of an idea of your progress in the box. But it is
a continuous scroll through the entire book. Which has its advantages and disadvantages.
I know for me the big advantage to having it go by page is the sense of progress. As
you flip through the pages you get the sense that you are moving forward in the book and
also you are kind of reaching the end of a reading session. You get the sense that, well
let me just go to the end of this page and the next page and then I'll stop. With scrolling
it is just kind of endless. Now some people may like that, like one over the other and
other people may prefer the old fashion page method.
Now a lot of this is going to change too when I flip the orientation. Notice now I have
289 pages because each of the half pages on the screen horizontally are smaller but I
have all the same basic options. If I go to themes here, I'm on full screen here, I can
go to book and I can also go to scroll. Scrolling can be really wide. On an iPad Mini it's not
too bad but on a full size iPad reading across the screen like that is a little much. So
you've got all the basic same options here in horizontal mode.
The interesting thing is in textbooks it is different because textbooks are created in
iBooks Author and there are tons of options. The creator of a textbook can actually change
what appears. So here I've got no control of the fonts, no control of the style because
I'm not using a certain style here. You can see it is taking me full screen. So I can
change the brightness, that's about it. In fact if I switch to the vertical mode you
can see that it is set in scrolling in this particular book and actually I do have controls
now vertically to change the font size. So sometimes it depends whether you are horizontal
or vertical if you are in a textbook.
Furthermore if you are dealing with pdf's, which you are going to read in iBooks as well,
then you are not going to have those options. You can see I have the brightness option but
of course I'm not going to be able to change the fonts and sizes and style of a pdf because
that is all set in design by the creator.
So here is a look at what you can and can't do in iBooks in as far as changing the style
of the text that you are reading. Of course some of the stuff is new like the scrolling
and the plain background and in the future we may find that there are even more options,
more fonts, maybe more colors from Apple. So always keep checking whenever you see an
iBooks update.
Until next time this is Gary with MacMost Now.