i see internet archive is doing another "books in browsers" conference, with one of the themes being "beautiful books". so i have two questions. first, isn't it a bit presumptuous to speak of "beautiful books" when the actual .epub and .mobi e-books you serve to people are filled with the distressingly ugly crap of uncorrected o.c.r.? second, the point about "books in browsers" in something that is a bit misleading. i don't believe anyone would question that the e-books in our cyberlibrary must be viewable in a browser. but is that the _only_ way that they should be viewable? or even the most important way they could be viewed? let me rephrase the question, to illustrate the point. assume i said "twitter in browsers", or "facebook in browsers". again, i don't think anyone would argue that twitter or facebook should _not_ be available in a browser. that would be ridiculous. but it would be equally ridiculous to put forward the argument that twitter or facebook _only_ be available in browsers, or even that browsers should be the _predominant_ platform for them. we've learned that app access is typically _much_ more friendly. the world of software applications has lately come to appreciate in a very deep manner the importance of decoupling the content of a website from the browser-interface used to see that content. nowadays, the a.p.i.'s which you offer are _extremely_ important in terms of leveraging the relevance of your content by allowing outside developers to add value to it in ways you hadn't foreseen. particularly with e-books, the chrome and functionality that is offered by the web-browser are _not_ particularly appropriate to the interface, the content, or any of the reading experience. to the extent that you focus on the browser, you miss the point. -bowerbird