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Ask Slashdot: Websites Friendly To eReader Browsers?
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."
Instapaper is great for this type of thing: http://instapaper.com./
I just wish I could program the kobo.
-- hendrik
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.
Just because people recommend Instapaper, I'm going to tell you about http://readitlaterlist.com/ . Same idea, really. Slightly better instrumented wrt mobile apps.
-- we're here you're not
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.
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.
But CSS/HTML/JS are standards! What are you talking about?
Sure... they are but they're standards but aren't always implemented identically, or aren't implemented at all (I'm looking at you, IE, you son-of-a-bitch). When you start to get into mobile platforms you begin to lose 'some' features that you've had on the desktop... and bam reinventing the wheel for the 3 visitors you get per month from a Symbian device.
What should happen is device makers and manufacturers should stop selling shitty incomplete features and products. Just because it could browse the web doesn't mean it should because the experience is crap. I as a web-developer aim to support 99% of my traffic, and do, it is beyond a reasonable expectation that I support everything under the sun when no platforms are identical.
On top of that people want, or so the ramblings on internet has lead me to believe, more dynamic, application like websites that are impossible to replicate or implement well with simple text.
In conclusion, try calling the people who made your e-reader, not the people who make websites... and I hope that's a bit of insight as to why websites aren't universal.
The best way to read things on an e-ink device is to subscribe to the RSS feeds you want and use Google reader. Hopefully the feeds provide the same content as actually visiting the site and not just a headline.
Thread closed.
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.
I guess this is the time when those websites that serve content in 20 pages actually come handy.
The Kobo isn't my only mobile internet reading device, but I do have it with me often enough to wonder if there's a better way to browse.
Well, there was Flash for this before Apple decided to play dirty on mobile. Even with all the problems flash has, they did a pretty good job keeping things universal. Thanks again apple for ruining that.
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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 is 600 g) - enough so that it's inconvenient to hold it for long in one hand, which is a must for convenient reading. Even Nook Color, at 450 g, is still too heavy for that.
Also, http://www.readability.com/
Basically re-formats any webpage into an e-reader friendly format
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Thanks apple for actually doing something DECENT for once. Right, let's just keep wasting CPU cycles, preventing keyboard shortcuts from working, banish users that require e-readers and high-contrast browsers due to disabilities and put the entire internet in the hands of ONE company (Adobe). Why don't you learn to use the standards that have been and are currently developed and refined by multiple industry leading organizations (W3C, etc) and do your fucking job PROPERLY.
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You need to move, but your only vehicle is a small, pre-owned compact? Why didn't you just by a moving truck? It can do everything you want and more! Sure it costs several times as much, is nowhere near as fuel efficient, and isn't as pleasant to use for your daily commute, but who cares!?
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.
Having written web sites I am irritated by these small screen browsers that "interpret" what the site should look like. I prefer to load a style sheet for narrow screens that make the site usable for smaller screens and still gives me some control over how the site looks. For example my churches web site (a work in progress) that tries to collapse gracefully for the small screen device.
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I like to read in bright sunlight on my porch. The kobo is perfect for this because of the epaper screen.
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.
Until a manufacturer comes up with a decent built in lighting scheme for a eInk device, I'm sticking with TFTs.
Amazon sells a cover with integrated LED light for Kindle 3. Unlike alternatives, it uses Kindle's own battery to power itself (via the metal hooks that connect the cover to the device), and its angle is practically perfect - it gives enough light to comfortably read the screen even at night with no other light sources (which I often do), distributes it more or less evenly without bright spots, and does not shine in your eyes. It's quite expensive ($50), but well worth it.
I very much dislike reading from TFT screens at night because of backlight - the "black" on the screen lights up too much. On the other hand, OLED screens with black background and amber text are awesome, because black on them really is pitch black.
Maybe a new css media type should be created to address eReaders. Perhaps a low resolution or black and white type.
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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 browser. With Flash you are going to see the contents exactly the way it was developped or not see at all! Even if you are blind.
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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.
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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.
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It's way easier to use --- I hate signing up for stuff, and it doesn't do any annoying spamy stuff like instapaper does. Check it: http://www.rekindle.it/
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 to have it all.
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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.
I catch all kinds of users coming into my sites. We check them in Windows with Firefox, MSIE, Chrome, and Safari. We spot check with Firefox and Safari on OS X. We do further spot checking with various tablets and phones. We make efforts not to include incompatible functions on our sites. So, no ActiveX controls. No mandatory plugins. No "well, this works in MSIE 6, screw the rest of 'em". No "well this cool plugin works on Firefox".
I was trying to book airline tickets last night. I was checking prices through a few different places. When it was time to buy, I couldn't get through the damned forms with Firefox. It just wouldn't go. So I switched over to MSIE. I got a little farther, but I got hung up on a warm fuzzy CSS error box. It showed a red button, and said "Error" beside it. No hint to what the error was.. I was left wondering, If they aren't writing for MSIE or Firefox on Windows, who the hell are they targeting? I gave up on them, and bought from another airline, where I could actually buy the tickets.
So, if you're targeting a specific browser type, you're limiting your potential users and therefore your sales. In my case, that decision to make the site work with some unknown browser, cost them several hundred dollars. I did check, and the flight is only half booked. So they'll most likely be flying with an empty seat. The cost of the flight is the same regardless if there is a warm body in that seat.
On one of my web sites, I have a huge viewer base, from all around the world. I've seen every browser that I know of, and plenty that I'd never heard of. Beyond the web site itself, we have quite a few users that use RSS. I got an email a while back from someone using a broken RSS reader. It barely works on most sites, and was broken on ours. I took that extra time to make sure it even worked for him. You never know who the end user is. It could be one person who never gets out of the house, or one person who has a huge base of coworkers, friends and family, and will refer all of them to my site in the future.
Another user was complaining that the mobile version didn't work on his phone. I couldn't find an emulator for it, and he wasn't anywhere near the US (where I am). I worked with him for a while to debug it. I'd make a change, test it against what should work, and then ask him to test. It took about 6 cycles of that to figure out what was wrong. Mobile device traffic from that country spiked up in the following months. I hadn't even considered that I'd have a lot of users in some Eastern European nation would love my content.
I barely recommend that anyone use my site with their mobile device, but *I* do use the mobile version. I know from my logs that other people do too. It's not just iPhones, iPads, and Androids either. I still have some people using ancient phones that are barely capable of browsing any sites, and they work perfectly with mine.
Serious? Seriousness is well above my pay grade.
I've found issues that were particular either to chrome on linux, or to firefox on windows xp or to safari on windows (don't shoot the messenger), whereas the rest of the combinations of browsers and OS's were fine. So I don't he's smoking.
Curiously yours, crip.
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.
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.
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You could try readability: http://www.readability.com/bookmarklets It works well on my browsers, though I don't know if it will work on your browser.
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.
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 rendering engine to automatically adjust how the site is rendered.
I happen to have a Kobo Touch as well, btw, and it uses Webkit as its rendering engine for the browser. As long as the website you're viewing is standards-compliant, and doesn't have 200-pixel wide flash based menus to navigate, you're pretty much safe. You can also try most of your usual websites with "m" as a prefix (instead of "www"). That seems to be a fairly standard option these days for the "mobile" version of the site, and all of the news websites that I frequent (except /., and that isn't really "news") follow that standard and render just fine on my Kobo.
btw... if you're really a web developper, I have a hard time believing you didn't already know that there's really only 3 rendering engines you need to worry about... Chrome and Safari both use Webkit (as do Konqueror, Midori, Chromium, and most mobile browsers). Firefox and Seamonkey use Gecko (as do a few other browsers). IE and its derivatives (like Slimbrowser and Maxthon) use Trident. Opera is able to switch between the three, in addition to its own internal rendering engine. And all 3 of those rendering engines can pass Acid2, and *mostly* pass Acid3. If the code you're writing doesn't do anything weird/unusual with the CSS formatting and HTML code, and you're not using idiosyncratic JavaScript code, then you really don't even need to test in the different rendering engines, as you have a reasonable guarantee that they'll all work. If, however, you want to be safe, just install Firefox, IE, and Chrome on your test machine, and you've covered all of the bases. If it works in all 3 of those, you have a reasonable guarantee that it will work in every browser, and supporting a "mobile" platform just means changing your page layout to something that'll display nicely and usably on a small screen.
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?
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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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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.
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you're using the wrong tool for the job, obviously. that's like asking why the freeway can't have wider lanes for your tractor.
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Let me know when I can delete the hidden cookies it sets, access browser keyboard shortcuts without having to click outside the video (try hitting ctrl+tab after clicking inside a youtube video, i DARE you!) or keep using other flash sites when ONE of them decides it no longer enjoys life.