Slashdot Mirror
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./
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.
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.
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.
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
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
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.
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.
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.
I needed a sig so people would know who I am, but I was too drunk to make something witty, so you get this instead.
in css 3 media queries will be able to handle that. (that's also something which should be supported in epub3).
Robert Nagle, Idiotprogrammer, Houston
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.
Rethinking email
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/
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.
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're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"