Ask Slashdot: Websites Friendly To eReader Browsers? 96
DJCouchyCouch writes "I have a Kobo Touch eReader that comes with a bare-bones web browser. Since the screen is E-Ink based, the browsing experience is pretty poor due to the low refresh rate of the screen. Scrolling is twitchy and often laggy. Are there sites out there that can reformat a website to be more like book reading? I'm not asking for a perfect, tablet-like experience, just something better than what it does now."
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Well... Making a website ain't exactly terribly easy these days.
Three primary desktop environments: windows, os x, linux
Five browsers: internet explorer, firefox, chrome, safari, and opera
Three primary mobile environments: win phone, iOS, Android (along with Blackberry and Symbian)
Four browsers: opera mobile, android browser, safari, internet explorer
So as a web developer, I have a total of 12 different desktop environments and 11 mobile to support... plus e-readers, and various other platforms that pop-up.
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Two primary desktop environments:
Windows and OSX
Four browsers:
Win: Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome
OSX: Safari, Firefox, Chrome
Two primary mobile environments: iOS, Android
Android Browser, iOS browser
8 Total.
What the fuck are you smoking?
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In addition, assuming tools did improve to the point that they could work around browser differences an
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Except that Flash was a little too universal for it to work well. Before it being known for waisting CPU and not being available on mobile, Flash was known for destroying the interface of your pages on any browser that differed from the standard desktop where they were developped.
It doesn't matter if your screen is too big, or too small, or if you don't have a screen at all. It doesn't matter if you can read well or badly, if your display has colors or not, if you want to use a small window or maximize your
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I love seeing people say crap like that. If you watch your demographics, 99% of your market could be MSIE 6.0 on WinXP. That would be true if your page didn't work on anything else. The 1% would be people coming in, then not able to use your site, and leaving.
If you put just a little bit of work into compatibility, you'd likely find that your traffic (and sales, assuming you expect an income) would increase.
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If you write standards-compliant code, you're generally safe. Doing UI/widget codes does suck, particularly if you're using flash, but as long as you write something that plays friendly with Trident, Webkit, and Gecko, you're pretty safe. If you want to be nice, have a "mobile" version of your site which puts all the navigation stuff as normal links at the top/bottom of the page, rather than along a sidebar, and if you want to be *really* nice, have server-side php looking at the browser ID sent by the rend
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I find it odd that you put Symbian and Blackberry after Windows Phone when the market share says otherwise. Symbian has 8x Win Phone's market share and Blackberry 4x. Windows Phone is 5th in terms of market share.
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Also, http://www.readability.com/ [readability.com]
Basically re-formats any webpage into an e-reader friendly format
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I always tought readability reformatted a webpage into a desktop friendly format. Up to now I've never imagined it was intented to be used on e-readers.
Instapaper! (Score:5, Informative)
Instapaper is great for this type of thing: http://instapaper.com./ [instapaper.com.]
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Thread closed.
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You have to mention Hitler to close a thread.
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Read It Later similarly reformats pages for you. There are a few different Android clients for both RIL and Instapaper, and with browser plug-ins you can easily add any page to your reading lists.
Alternatively if the browser on your eReader supports Javascript bookmarks there are loads of "clean-up" bookmarklets you can try (Readability springs to mind). Switching to the print view works on a lot of pages too.
program it! (Score:1)
I just wish I could program the kobo.
-- hendrik
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Apparently, some source is available.
https://github.com/kobolabs/Kobo-Reader [github.com]
But not the actual reading program itself. Nor the browser, from what I could find.
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Thanks for the link. It looks useful.
Scrolling? (Score:5, Insightful)
Does the browser really try to scroll? On e-ink? Madness!
This is not a problem with web pages, it's a problem with this browser. It should paginate web pages and page instead of scroll through them. Problem solved.
Re:Scrolling? (Score:4, Informative)
The browser on the Kindle doesn't scroll, it just jumps one page at a time, at least when you use the page buttons. It may jump in small bits if you move the cursor over the bottom of the page. I honestly haven't used it enough to remember. But it does have a reader mode which reformats the web page to strip out all the unnecessary junk and make it easy to read on the screen. It works just like the reader mode in Safari, which I think was based on Instapaper (as the top comment suggested).
That mode actually works very well, and if you wanted to read some long article on the Kindle I wouldn't mind using it. But between the network connection, the CPU, and the eInk refresh rate the browser is very painful to use. To load any moderately complicated web site to the point you can navigate to find what you're after is an exercise in patience.
Maybe the submitter should consider accessing the mobile versions of websites (where available). That would help.
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That mode actually works very well, and if you wanted to read some long article on the Kindle I wouldn't mind using it. But between the network connection, the CPU, and the eInk refresh rate the browser is very painful to use. To load any moderately complicated web site to the point you can navigate to find what you're after is an exercise in patience.
It's not exactly smooth, but I regularly shop on a third-party book store from my Kindle, using its web browser.
And yes, it helps immensely to use their mobile version. I also wrote them and requested that they default to it when they see Kindle user agent, and show a separate download link for .mobi just as they do for .epub (so that you don't have to go to the combobox to pick a format) - which they promptly did. But then it's exactly the kind of website one would be likely to surf on Kindle, so I wouldn'
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Care to make a plug for them?
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I don't think it'd help you much, considering that it [litres.ru] is a Russian e-book store.
As an aside - ironically, unlike you guys, we've had non-DRM book stores with wide selection, pricing well below paper books, and a dozen formats for any conceivable reader device - from J2ME phone to Kindle - for several years now. All completely legal and paying royalties to authors with their approval. Reason being, they know that they have to offer a good deal and to make shopping as convenient as possible, because otherwise
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Readitlater (Score:1)
Just because people recommend Instapaper, I'm going to tell you about http://readitlaterlist.com/ [readitlaterlist.com] . Same idea, really. Slightly better instrumented wrt mobile apps.
Text browser (Score:3)
I often read the internet using Lynx through a slow SSH connection, fits the e-ink display model well (it'd use the display better for walls of text), but many sites won't work, javascript won't work, frames won't work (other text browsers like Links apparently do a better job there). Even slashdot doesn't work well with Lynx any more (login doesn't work on my system so you can't use preferences to fix it), which sucks because it reminds you how difficult it is for physically disabled people to get around things we take for granted.
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Agree, though I was going to suggest links2 which does both text and text + images, I often use it when I am on my workbench machine and I usually work from the CLI
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elinks does some basic CSS and JS, actually.
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I still use good old Netscape 3 on some sites, including Slashdot. No styles, no javascript, no images. I couldn't read /. at all without it, the default look makes my aging eyes bleed and it's so slow you have to drive stakes to see if it's moving. With NS3 it's essentially plain text, and very fast.
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You know, you can still force Slashdot into retard mode. You permit scripts from slashdot and fsdn, deny google, and use preferences to turn off all the horrible options. Then if you must you can use a user script to disable the sidebar -- I did this one my EEE701, which has a teensy tiny screen and the sidebar makes slashdot unreadable.
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Yeah, but that still doesn't get past Mozilla's gawdawful slow rendering engine. NS3 renders at 10-20x the speed, no shit. Having no patience with the World Wide Wait as it is, I prefer having it sped up to somewhere near 1998 levels whenever possible. I swear, 1998 and dialup (rendered on a 486 to boot) was faster than today's bloated pages on broadband!
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Well, I have no trouble believing that. Before it could do alpha effects, and sub-pixel font rendering, I imagine the engine had a lot less to think about. On the other hand, I prefer to use a single browser. It *is* pretty awful scrolling Firefox on something without a lot of acceleration.
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Yeah, and my internet box is still a lowly P3-550 with a mere 1GB RAM. It's outlived all the P4s and keeps on chuggin' along. You'd think that would suffice to do what amounts to rearranging text on the screen via a simple interpreted script, but apparently not. The whole Moz family has dreadful programming Zen. :( Good example of why coders should be forced to work on the minimum hardware, not the very best -- make 'em realize what they're doing to anyone who is behind the bleeding edge.
Whatever major "up
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You can do that, though, with squid. The most common non-caching use of squid that I'm familiar with is to run adzapper (although you can cache, too) to remove unwanted content from webpages. I've done it, but AdBlock Plus is so good that I just use that. It does the same thing, unlike Notscripts on Chrome. That's unfair; Notscripts does manage to never load certain elements, but it still has to rewrite pages after they are first interpreted rather than before, which makes it fairly half-assed in that regar
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Would I have to run my own proxy server with this Squid thing? Use small words, my network-fu is lacking, or possibly negative. :(
I nurse "old" systems along too, partly for thrift, but largely because yeah, I hate to see a functional box go to the dump, it's a waste. Everything I have here is salvage, other than the odd part bought when I couldn't scrounge it. Unfortunately the bad-capacitors era took out a lot of otherwise perfectly-functional P4s (and my soldering-fu ain't that great either). Conversely
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Short answer no, medium answer yes but it is not a separate machine, slightly longer answer is that a server is a program, not a computer, and a computer that has a server running on it which is willing to serve someone's requests is also called a server, because nerds are bad at names.
I have a Shuttle P3 with bad caps. I think I may actually fix it, but I've put it off quite long already.
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Those are small enough words, but my brain still hurts. :)
I've held onto a couple really nice boards with bad caps too, having a fantasy that someday I'll fix 'em, or try to anyway. Or at least get some soldering practice. Not terribly motivated so long as I've got a stack of good boards of similar qualities, but the day may come when you can't find a board that works with your legacy whatever that you can't live without... so I'm reluctant to throw 'em out.
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well basically, you install the server program (squid with adzapper) on your local machine, and then your machine becomes an ad-blocking proxy server. then you just set your proxy to your machine (referring to it as "localhost") and bingo, you are now using your own proxy. An extension like torbutton will let you trivially toggle use of the proxy.
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Ah, thanks, saved for reference. My brain is now working again, the instructions being simple enough to untangle its two left f/e/e/t/ halves. :)
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you might be able to get a free "virtual appliance" that will do it in a virtual machine or some such, but that has additional overhead and is not really suitable for a P3 :)
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Spare machines aren't a problem, I have plenty of carcasses that can be made to earn their keep :) Tho scrounging 'em AGP cards, that's been unexpectedly thin pickings!
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Just use Calibre (Score:2)
Just have Calibre import the website then put the resulting E-Pub on your device of choice. It's a great way to read news, blogs and other stuff on the go.
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I would imagine the point is to use Whispernet on the go. If you have a PC handy to run Calibre, why would you bother reading it from Kindle in the first place?
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I second this. Calibre has been great to me. I used to read all my news sitting at the computer. Now I have it download the news daily and package them as an epub, stripping away a lot of the pointless formatting on those sites. I can now read away from the computer.
However, if you need something "on the go" where you don't have access to your PC, then I can't help...
Paged websites (Score:1)
I guess this is the time when those websites that serve content in 20 pages actually come handy.
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I'm not the guy, but I'll answer on my behalf: because eInk is significantly better when you actually have to just read a lot, without interacting much with the text. It's perfect for fiction and other entertainment reading, and meh for technical books and such - but when 90% of what you read is for entertainment, it's exactly the right device for that purpose. It really is easier on the eyes.
iPad specifically is also much less convenient because it's more than twice as heavy (e.g. Kindle 3 is 250 g, iPad 2
Re:Why didn't you just get an iPad? (Score:4, Informative)
I'm not the guy, but I'll answer on my behalf: because eInk is significantly better when you actually have to just read a lot, without interacting much with the text. It's perfect for fiction and other entertainment reading, and meh for technical books and such - but when 90% of what you read is for entertainment, it's exactly the right device for that purpose. It really is easier on the eyes.
While I agree with you that e-ink is easier on the eyes, there's a key point that I think you missed. Lighting. I might be an unusual use case, but I frequently read in places where I either don't have light available, or for various reasons it's desirable not to turn lights on. For that reason, my ebook reader of choice is an ipod touch (which replaced a Palm T|X), in white on black it's not terribly hard on the eyes, and the back light from the TFT is very nice.
eInk is, of course, inherently incompatible with back lighting, and as far as I know (Though I could very well be wrong about this), the only major manufacturer to make a eInk device with a front light was Sony, and the fact that they only did it on one (now discontinued) model tells me that it probably didn't work that well, even though I never actually tried it myself.
Until a manufacturer comes up with a decent built in lighting scheme for a eInk device, I'm sticking with TFTs.
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eInk is, of course, inherently incompatible with back lighting, and as far as I know (Though I could very well be wrong about this)
It's true, pretty much by definition - a reflective screen has to reflect light, therefore it cannot be transparent. Well, maybe with some polarization tricks - but for eInk at least, the particles, both black and white, are solid matter (titanium oxide for white and colored plastic for black).
only major manufacturer to make a eInk device with a front light was Sony
I've seen that in a store, and it's very meh. It's not really a front light - rather, they've put LEDs around and above the screen. It gave very uneven lighting with large blotches of light and dark stripes in between
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I read mostly at day (inside or outside). E-ink rules for that. However i picked up a cool case for my Kobo with a nice attached light. It is great! Once you figure the angle to light the screen with no reflection, I can read for hours. Plus it protects the device.
If I was one read in the dark most of the time, then perhaps i would consider a TFT/LCD device. Also just to read stuff on the iPad seems excessively costly ..
I will wait and see. As suggested previously, its just a mater of convergence. Be nice
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eInk is, of course, inherently incompatible with back lighting, and as far as I know (Though I could very well be wrong about this), the only major manufacturer to make a eInk device with a front light was Sony, and the fact that they only did it on one (now discontinued) model tells me that it probably didn't work that well, even though I never actually tried it myself.
The problem is that the films that make side lighting work well get thicker when the screen gets larger. You could side-light a tiny e-Ink screen, but who makes those any more?
Re:Why didn't you just get an iPad? (Score:5, Interesting)
E-readers and tablets are completely different devices, similar only in approximate shape and the fact that they both have a screen. E-readers are low cost, energy efficient, light weight, and have a screen designed to be read in any conditions without causing eye strain. Tablets cost 5x as much, burn through their battery 50x as fast, weigh 4x as much, and have a backlit screen that hurts your eyes if you stare at them to long. Tablets are great for a lot of things. Reading isn't one of them. And if you don't care about those other things, you ought to go with the superior device for your particular use case, even if that means occasionally wanting to check a web page on the road and being caught with an inferior tool for the job.
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The correct answer of course is to hire a van, not ask why your small compact cannot carry a sofa. Eink will never be suitable for browsing, so it's useless for most people except to read text-only books. If that is all you want to do great.
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Kindle Fire was announce two days ago. Under $200, shipping November 15th. Pre-order now. May still be a long wait. But it is a tablet and color. The back story on the price is that is seems to be the razor, rather than the razor blade. And there are estimates of 5 million being sold quickly. So it is not likely to die on the vine right away as other low priced tabled have done. This note responds to the parent consideration of price.
Re:Why I don't just get an iPad? (Score:1)
I like to read in bright sunlight on my porch. The kobo is perfect for this because of the epaper screen.
We should not have to do this. (Score:1)
A new css M assedia type? (Score:2)
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in css 3 media queries will be able to handle that. (that's also something which should be supported in epub3).
Thanks for the info! (Score:1)
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There's already a print type, they should have an option to render it. Possibly it would be easily done with a user script. Then you just need a rule to force all links to be drawn with underlines even if they turn it off in the print sheet.
you get what you pay for. (Score:2)
You bought an eReader that browses, not a real browser, You can't expect too much for the price that you paid. This issue stopped me from buying an eReader as I want to browse more than read.
Use RekindleIT! (Score:2)
Get a better ereader (Score:2)
Seriously.
The Kobo just suck ass. They are all nice and pretty in the store demos, but the don't hold a candle towards a Kindle or Nook (the e-ink ones). And I'm talking e-ink, not the Fire or Nook Color or a regular tablet.
Kobos are the Ladas of the car world.
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Kobos are more open. Kindle is locked into Amazon's AZW format for DRM'd (read: general non-geek public) legal book purchases.
Kobo uses the Adobe DRM/EPUB ecosphere. My Kobo WiFi ($79 at Borders 6 months ago during their store closings) has books on it bought from Borders (back when Borders via Kobo was a separate instance of kobo from kobobooks.com kobo), Kobo, Google Books via Adobe Digital Editions sideloading, and Powell's books (via Google Books via ADE sideloading).
My wife's Nook Color has all the Kob
readability "plug-in" (Score:3, Informative)
dumb question (Score:1)