Safari Books Online joins the iPhone family

After reading an announcement on iPodObserver.com, I decided to check out Safari Books Online’s new iPhone application, Safari Bookbag which allows you to read PDFs downloaded from your account.  You won’t be downloading Harry Potter here though - this library “is the e-reference library for programmers and IT professionals.”

Since I’m not a subscriber, I signed up for their free trial, which gives you up to 10 days to get to know their service.  If you decide to give them a try and sign up from their iPhone announcement page, don’t be swayed by the $10 iTunes Gift Certificate - there were 500 of them and they had all been claimed by the end of the day Monday.  I do hope that they remove the iTunes graphic to avoid customer confusion, or at least let them know that they didn’t qualify during registration, it is very easy to miss the fine print at the bottom of the page and that could lead to disappointment for some users.

Being an iPhone developer, I decided to add The iPhone Developer’s Cookbook: Building Applications with the iPhone SDK to my bookshelf and download a chapter to my phone.  Adding a book is simple - just look for the prominent “Add to My Bookshelf” button in the upper right hand corner of the page.  One thing to keep in mind is that you only have so many available slots on your shelf, depending on which subscription plan you’re on, and some books take up more than one slot.  If you’re planning on reading the book on your iPhone, make sure that there are PDF logos in the Table of Contents in the left hand column or in the center of the page just under the dark blue navigation strip at the top of the page.

Downloading a chapter PDF works on the same principle that adding books uses - in this case, you use Tokens to download the files.  Just like with bookshelf slots, you have a certain number of Tokens per month, you can also purchase additional Tokens if you run out.  Just remember, the basic accounts do not include Tokens, you have to purchase them separately.  Premium accounts, however, all include with 5 Tokens per month and, of course, you can purchase additional Tokens if needed.  Once you redeem your Token for the chapter it is added to the “My Downloads” section of your account.

Once you’ve signed in to your account in Safari Bookbag, it automatically downloads available PDFs from your account and displays them in Cover View.  My test chapter downloaded in under two seconds so, unless you have a large number of PDFs to download, you should be ready to go almost immediately.  Navigating the app is simple and intuitive due to the Cover View interface – tap the book cover and select a chapter and you’re reading.

One minor issue is that, since you’re reading a PDF that presents the pages exactly as they would be in book form (even with the paragraph fully zoomed in to fill the screen) the text is very small.

Overall, the app is dead simple and very intuitive – it will make a great addition for anyone with a Safari Books account.