Brick-and-mortar book chain Barnes & Noble managed to outlast competitor Borders when mobile first started to shine, and transitioned to the digital era with the Nook.  The e-reader is now several generations more mature and competes with Amazon’s Kindle Fire, which as of last year has had a web-based counterpart named the Kindle Cloud Reader. Now B&N is jumping into the cloud with an e-reading web app of its own – Nook for the Web.

There are six books currently available for free on the platform until July 26, here’s the full list, but a few to mention are: Map of Bones by James Rollins, Sex and the City by Candace Bushnell, The Vow by Kim Carpenter, The Boxcar Children Summer Special by Gertrude Chandler Warner, Brave by Tennant Redbank andPerfect Island Getaways by Patricia Schultz.”

Nook for the Web is a bit buggy according to early reports, which is not unexpected from any launch version of software. It gives users a sample of each book before a purchase similarly to Google Books, and only works on PCs and Macs. That means no iPad support just yet, and is directly influenced by Barnes & Noble’s partnership with Microsoft.

Back in April the software giant invested $300 million in the book chain to give Windows users more e-reading options. The deal resulted in the creation of a new B&N subsidiary called Newco that will – among other things- also product a Nook tablet powered by the upcoming Windows 8. Microsoft has a lot invested in the success of the OS, which is the first one that’s optimized for not only desktops but also tablets: it even borrows the tile-based Metro UI scheme that was introduced with Windows Phone 7.