OpenBerg Lector 5

CNET Editors' review

by: CNET Staff on February 27, 2009

Short on features, this free Firefox add-on allows the browser to open select e-books. Sporting no interface of its own, OpenBerg Lector operates inside Firefox using mouse scrolling and arrow navigation. The program could use a short help manual or simple instructions. There is no mention of what formats Lector reads or how files are opened,

The e-book reader is as bare-bones as any we've seen. Selecting a book is easily accomplished through Firefox's Open File browse menu, although the dialog doesn't limit file types. That makes finding files slightly more difficult, since you must scroll through all files instead of seeing only the e-book formats accessible through Lector. The lack of documentation makes finding the supported formats a trial-and-error discovery process. Our testers successfully opened CBR, CBZ, EPUB, LIT, OPF, and OBZ formatted e-books. Hyperlinks embedded in the files worked to open Web sites. Scrolling is either mouse driven or by using the arrow keys. The process is not smooth, and the utility opens only a few pages as needed.

Ostensibly, printing is available through Firefox, but we found it troublesome to print more than a page or two at a time. Infrequent e-book readers might appreciate OpenBerg Lector's Firefox integration and simple controls, but this clunky reader won't appeal to those wanting an extensive feature set.