Stanza 3.0.3

CNET Editors' note: The "Download Now" link directs you to the iTunes App Store, where you must continue the download process. You must have iTunes installed in order to open the link, and you must have an active iTunes account to download the application. This download may not be available in some countries.

CNET Editors' review

by: CNET Staff on November 06, 2008

Stanza is a free application that lets you read electronic books on your iPhone. It's an excellent value, albeit with a no-frills approach that stops short of handling DRM-protected content and docs with heavy formatting or images.

Stanza provides a comfortable, highly customizable reading experience, and you can quickly change text size (with a slider in the settings, or using pinch and reverse pinch), adjust line and margin spacing, and choose from many different fonts. You can even pick your own text and background colors, in case you want old-school, CRT-style green on black. You can flip through chapters, rotate portrait or landscape, and search through text. Stanza also lets you leave multiple bookmarks and always remembers where you last left off.

It handles a wide variety of non-DRM formats (including Amazon Kindle, Mobipocket, Microsoft LIT, PalmDoc, and more), but PDFs and HTML dont always work quite like you'd expect, since Stanza strips out images and formatting. Overall, this is an easy-to-use and useful app for anyone who doesn't already have a DRMed e-book collection, as Stanza makes it easy to download a ton of public domain content from its Online Catalog section (everything from Walt Whitman, Edith Wharton, and George Orwell to Kurt Vonnegut, Cory Doctorow, and H.P. Lovecraft). If you're still regretful about your lazy teenage years, you'll especially like the High School Reading subsection, so you can download and finally finish reading "Moby Dick" and "The Great Gatsby."

Publisher's Description

From Lexcycle:

Read books on your iPhone, iPod Touch, and iPad! Lexcycle Stanza brings the digital book revolution to your pocket with a reading interface that is unrivaled in its clarity and ease of use. With over 4 million downloads around the world, Stanza has become an iPhone phenomenon, and is featured as one of the top three Apple favorites in their "App Store Turns 1" celebration. Purchase popular new books from a selection of over 50,000 contemporary titles available in various partner stores, or choose from an additional 50,000 free classics and recent original works available from Project Gutenberg, Feedbooks, and many other sources. Store and categorize hundreds of books in the organizer, and transfer your own ePub, eReader, PDF, Comic Book Archive (CBR & CBZ), and DjVu books from your Mac or PC to Stanza by dragging & dropping the files into the "File Sharing" section of the "Apps" tab of your device in iTunes. Stanza has been recognized by numerous organizations: Time Magazine lists Stanza as one of their "Top 11 iPhone Applications" Stanza is a PC Magazine "Editor's Choice" and one of their "21 cool iPhone Apps" The New York Times features Stanza: "Tip of the Week: Turn Your iPhone Into an e-Book" Wired features Stanza in their "10 Most Awesome iPhone Apps of 2008" article Forbes Magazine lauds Stanza, saying: "Stanza, like Kindle, lets users download new content directly to their device." Apple lists Stanza in their collection of "iTunes 2008 Top Apps" Stanza is a Macworld reader's favorite in: "Our Favorite iPhone Apps: Your turn" Stanza won the 2008 award for "Best Free App" at BestAppEver.com, where they write: "Stanza has redefined how everyone thinks about reading on a mobile device." Stanza has additionally been praised by CNET, the Washington Post, Ars Technica, the Boston Globe, Information Week, and PC Magazine's AppScout. Your entire summer reading, your class syllabus for the whole year, all the reference material you will ever need: all at your fingertips. Literally.

What's new in this version: Support for iPhone4 retina display Multi-tasking support Launch Stanza when PDF books are downloaded from external apps (like Mail and Safari)