0.26

The Readium development community is pleased to announce the release of 0.26. This release was pushed 3 May 2017.

This release of Readium SDK and ReadiumJS (Chrome Extension and Cloud Reader) is a relatively significant release for the SDK as it comprises all the changes and improvements needed to integrate multiple DRM schemes, including Readium LCP.

The tag for this release is 0.26 on GitHub.

The primary change in the SDK is addition of support for Readium LCP and other DRM schemes. To be clear, this release does not include the release of LCP itself but comprises the changes made to the SDK to enable app developers to integrate one or more DRMs, such as LCP or Sony’s URMS with applications based on Readium. These changes are primarily in the ContentModule and ContentFilter architecture. For developers not using those facilities the impact of these changes should be small or non-existent.

There are no new features in the Chrome App or the Cloud Reader. However, the release of Google Chrome v. 57 on March 9 “fixed” a previous security hole in its browser extensions framework for iFrames. The result is that inline-scripts (JavaScript embedded in an EPUB page) will no longer function in the Readium Chrome app, due to tighter Content Security Policy checks. Instead, an exception is thrown when an inline script attempts to execute. It is still possible to write scripts that will work in the EPUBs, but they have to be written in a specific way compatible with Chrome extensions’ CSP.

For more information about the security protocol and how to write compliant JavaScript interactivity, see this article. An extensive discussion of the issue in the readium-js-viewer repository can be found here. The issue includes links to both invalid and valid EPUBs. For more information, please contact Ric Wright directly.

Note!  This security protocol does NOT affect the CloudReader, only the Chrome app. The CloudReader execution of inline JavaScript is not affected.

The complete release notes are here.

The  source code for 0.26 has been pushed to master. The master branch of the repos have all been tagged with 0.26. The develop branch is now tagged as 0.27-alpha.

A new build of the CloudReader is here.

A new  build of the Chrome App is here. It has been pushed to the Chrome store.

The release notes have been updated on the readium.github.io site here.

Many thanks to Daniel Weck for toiling through the tedious release process.  And many thanks to Daniel and all the other contributors for making the release possible.