Better Reads
Mobile Applications
Highlights
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Client //
Qualisto
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Industry //
Software Development
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Technologies //
Windows Universal Platform (UWP), RestSharp, Json.NET
Better Reads is a 3rd party Windows 10 and Windows Phone client for Goodreads. With a user friendly native interface the application allows you to perform most of your daily activities in the social network for book lovers.
Being Windows Phone fans and Goodreads users at the same time our team’s objective was to fill in the gap of missing an official native app and provide the community with a beautiful, easy-to-use and smooth 3rd party counterpart. It was designed so that the look and feel to be as close as possible to the official Goodreads apps for iOS and Android but at the same time to deliver the great Windows Phone experience. Better Reads is completely free and there are no ads at all.
In terms of what you can do, the app provides the users with not all but the most major functions present in Goodreads. We are constantly working on improving the application by adding more and more new features and changing what our users don’t like. Just some of the features currently available:
- Login with Goodreads or Facebook account
- Updates page where you can track your friends’ reading statuses and actions
- Check book’s details, reviews from users and other similar books
- Browse your book shelves and add or remove books from there
- Mark book as read and add a review or just update your reading status
- Browse profiles of your friends and other users by looking at their personal info, book shelves and “what’s new” feed
- Search for a book by title, author’s name or ISBN
- Find books quickly by scanning them with ISBN code scanner
- Stay up-to-date with latest updates by looking at our Live tile
The initial release of the app targeted Windows Phone 8.1 only but once Windows 10 was announced we decided to port to Universal Windows Platform (UWP) so users are now able to use it on Windows 10 desktop and Windows 10 Mobile as well. It was a total fun but of course there were some challenges as well – it is not always possible to deliver the same great experience for mobile and desktop at the same time. It was easier to keep UI identical but then we wouldn’t use the full potential of the extra screen space in desktop apps and the overall user experience was going to suffer. So we put extra efforts on this and now the app reacts better to different devices and resolutions.
Application development continues - please help us by sending your feedback, comments and feature requests to our team. You can visit our UserVoice page at http://betterreads.uservoice.com.
* This app uses the Goodreads API but is not endorsed or certified by Goodreads Inc.
Being Windows Phone fans and Goodreads users at the same time our team’s objective was to fill in the gap of missing an official native app and provide the community with a beautiful, easy-to-use and smooth 3rd party counterpart. It was designed so that the look and feel to be as close as possible to the official Goodreads apps for iOS and Android but at the same time to deliver the great Windows Phone experience. Better Reads is completely free and there are no ads at all.
In terms of what you can do, the app provides the users with not all but the most major functions present in Goodreads. We are constantly working on improving the application by adding more and more new features and changing what our users don’t like. Just some of the features currently available:
- Login with Goodreads or Facebook account
- Updates page where you can track your friends’ reading statuses and actions
- Check book’s details, reviews from users and other similar books
- Browse your book shelves and add or remove books from there
- Mark book as read and add a review or just update your reading status
- Browse profiles of your friends and other users by looking at their personal info, book shelves and “what’s new” feed
- Search for a book by title, author’s name or ISBN
- Find books quickly by scanning them with ISBN code scanner
- Stay up-to-date with latest updates by looking at our Live tile
The initial release of the app targeted Windows Phone 8.1 only but once Windows 10 was announced we decided to port to Universal Windows Platform (UWP) so users are now able to use it on Windows 10 desktop and Windows 10 Mobile as well. It was a total fun but of course there were some challenges as well – it is not always possible to deliver the same great experience for mobile and desktop at the same time. It was easier to keep UI identical but then we wouldn’t use the full potential of the extra screen space in desktop apps and the overall user experience was going to suffer. So we put extra efforts on this and now the app reacts better to different devices and resolutions.
Application development continues - please help us by sending your feedback, comments and feature requests to our team. You can visit our UserVoice page at http://betterreads.uservoice.com.
* This app uses the Goodreads API but is not endorsed or certified by Goodreads Inc.
Screenshots