When I was ready to look at the book, clicking its icon (a reproduction of its cover) in Library View produced a pop-up window for initiating installation of , the DRM technology that Blio employs; PlayReady then assigns the PC a unique identifier. (Blio lets you synchronize content from a single account to up to five devices.)

Once the PlayReady installation (a one-time event) is complete, Blio offers you various views of your book, all accessible from a pop-up menu accessed by clicking the Book View icon in the lower right corner of the screen. The six principal views are double-page, single-page, thumbnail, text reflow, ReadLogic, and 3D. The first two are fairly self-explanatory: You see double-page spreads or single pages, which you can zoom in on or out from by clicking icons next to the Book View icon. To turn a page, you click arrows that pop up on either site of the page, or you use the scrollwheel on your mouse; Blio adds an animation effect that simulates the way a page turn looks on a paper book.

The thumbnail view shows several double-page spreads at a size that makes their content unreadable but provides sufficient visual cues to help you jump to specific locations in the book. Text reflow (which publishers can disable) is a traditional e-book reader format, with five type-size options and a choice of viewing the text in one column or two.

ReadLogic is a hybrid view that lets you read a book as it was laid out for print by automatically zooming in to text blocks in sequential order on a spread, and then zooming out so you can view the entire spread before proceeding to the next spread. This view seems especially well suited for situations where you want to maintain the relationship between graphical elements and text, while making the text large enough to be legible without causing eye strain.

The 3D view attempts to recreate the print reading experience by showing spreads as they might appear from a 45-degree angle (e.g. the bottom of the spread is wider than the top) and by providing animated page turns as you click arrows to the left and right of the spreads to flip through the pages. Ultimately, the realistic-looking page turns came across as a technologically impressive parlor trick that didn't improve the reading experience.