PRS-350 ePub <a> tags with touch screen readers

[Agama]

On a Sony PRS-300 <a> tags within a page are highlighted by using the up/down buttons, then actioned by pressing the circle button ("enter"). This can make it quite slow accessing links within a page when there are many links.

On a Sony touch screen reader can <a> tags simply be actioned by tapping on screen, or does the up/down/enter method still have to be used?

(If they can be tapped then I might upgrade to a 350 or 650)

[viviena]

Just single taps. Awesome for quickly jumping back and forth in a book with properly hyperlinked endnotes.

[Bilbo1967]

Yep - just a single tap. I had a 505 which used the up/down/enter method and now have a 650 which uses the tap method. I much prefer the 650!

[Shelleyleo]

I just got a 350 and have been LOVING that my eBook template's links (that I convert almost all my books to for consistency) work with just a quick tap on the screen. In longer lists of links all together I sometimes dig out the stylus to get an accurate click on the proper link I'm aiming for, but generally I don't even need to do that. Loving it. (I'd been about 2 steps from just removing all the links in my template as my Hanlin V3 didn't bother even letting me use the links in my ePubs - it would let me use them in some other formats, but not ePubs at all.)

I haven't played with the 650 much at all, but I know I love the 350's touch screen - except when I want to plunk the reader into a ziploc baggie and read in the tub, the touchscreen is used for so much and is IR so doesn't even fully require taps, just an object passing suggestively close, to activate it, I can't read with it in a baggie like I can with my old reader. Good thing my old reader still works for that (the things you don't realize are important can end up being a hassle in the end sometimes, so thought I'd mention it...but maybe I'm the odd duck here ).

[Agama]

Thanks to all for the info: the 350 sounds a good step up in usability from my 300.

Can you also tell me whether the 350 does any automatic styling of <a> tags found on a page or whether it simply respects the CSS defined in the ePub?

The 300 gives me good control by using the ePub CSS, except for the first link on a page which it automatically highlights in white text on a black background, (maybe this is helpful as it's effectively hovering on the first link), and I'm hoping that the 350 works similarly.

It's not easy to test such things in shops as they naturally don't let you load your own books on!

[Shelleyleo]

I haven't messed with a 300 myself, so I can't speak to how it differs from the 350 and I don't do any particular <a> CSS defining, but so far it has preserved every bit of CSS that is inherent in the ePub standard (unsure how it handles any elements that are not in spec as I generally stay very much within the bounds of the ePub spec on my own creations).

My <a> tags are all within <div> or <p> tags and the formatting specified for those tags trickles into the <a> formatting (for at least one of my various reader software apps I had to have the <a> tags within a <p> or <div> or it wouldn't format properly).

My links are mostly of the sort that should display simply as something like: [Prev] using the same background, no shading, all the default appearances of a link without any special definitions. On the 350, all the links have a middle-shade-greyish background that is definitely darker than the default background color with the default black text. If you look at the ePub in Sony's Reader Library software on a PC at least (current version on Win7 here for example), the links have the same kind of block shading they do on the 350 but it isn't nearly as pronounced - but it should give you an indication at least.

If you want to PM me an ePub that has formatting you'd like to see in action on a 350, I can see about loading it onto my 350 and taking pictures of whatever pages/elements you'd like to see the displayed results of. It isn't a perfect solution as sometimes pics aren't entirely clear, but I can try at least (or maybe I could put the reader on a flatbed scanner and see if it comes out clear that way too). Having been there in terms of "how exactly will /my/ books show up on such-and-such new reader that I'm considering", I'm more than willing to try to at least simulate you putting your books on a test reader by loading them and capturing what it looks like for you.

Since the 350 doesn't let you really have any means of selecting/tapping/hovering over a link and selecting it without a tap on the screen, there isn't really any need to have the first one "highlighted" for easy usage on the touchscreen models, that might be why that behaviour seems unclear to me (as in, I don't think the 350 does it that way so I'm not familiar with it).

[Agama]

Originally Posted by Shelleyleo

Since the 350 doesn't let you really have any means of selecting/tapping/hovering over a link and selecting it without a tap on the screen, there isn't really any need to have the first one "highlighted" for easy usage on the touchscreen models, that might be why that behaviour seems unclear to me.

Yes that makes sense. It's not something that you consider when you've never had a touch screen. I hadn't thought of trying the Sony software since I uninstalled it when switching to calibre as they tended to 'fight'. Do books look the same in ADE as they do in Sony Reader Library? I've still got ADE installed so that I can buy DRM'd books, so I could test my book there.

Thanks for the PM offer it's much appreciated. I'll make an extract of the book for testing and add a screenshot of how it looks on my 300.

[Agama]

@Shelleyleo: I couldn't find a way to add attachments to a PM so I've posted to this thread instead.

I've attached a simple ePub with some <a> tags for testing and a screenshot showing how the links apprear on a PRS-300.

There are 5 links on the Contents page:

(1) Book Title - displays in white on black as the reader highlights the first link on the page.

(2) & (3) Less-Than and Greater-Than 'arrows' in the Contents header box which show in black on grey as per CSS.

(4) & (5) #1 and #2 links to Title Page and Introduction which show in black on white as per CSS.

As each link is hovered by arrowing down then the reader highlights it in reverse text, (white on black), and uses the CSS to unstyle the previously highlighted link.

[Shelleyleo]

Okay, so I tinkered a bit, the images aren't crystal clear but they are the best I can do with my cellphone camera (my husband isn't awake and the scanner is on his computer or I'd have tried that - and still will if you desire).

ADE shows the file as CSS intends, no background color for the #'d links and the grey box as the background color for the upper boxed in links. It should look the same in ADE for both of us so I'm not attaching a screenshot of that here unless you want me to.

I am attaching 4 files though, I'll zip em for one quick download.
The file as it appears in Sony Reader Library software on my desktop computer. Three images on my PRS-350 - one is a overview of the contents page showing the entire reader in the frame, one is a close image of the part of the screen that actually has information/links, and the last is the Introduction page to show how links look on it as well (shown in part for consistent viewing and to show the way the CSS plays out on that page - since you included it I figured you'd want a copy of it).

Anyway - if there are other views/images you'd like of it or of another file, please let me know. The Reader Library software on the computer I did blank out my collection names (hence the big blank white spot on the left in the file tree) but otherwise the image is just as screenshotted - the darker grey background behind the links in the grey box section of the header are more obvious, but if you look closely the links that are prefaced with # are also shaded in the background slightly - it is a bit more obvious on the reader than in their software, but it is still visible.

[Agama]

Many thanks, these are quite clear enough and most helpful. The PRS-350 obviously does auto-highlight links on a page but it looks to be tastefully done.

One thing I did notice on your reader pics: you don't seem to have those annoying ADE numbers fowling the right-hand margin. (On my screenshot you can make out at a small "2" at the top-right of the page. On the PRS-300 these crop up throughout ePubs every few paragraphs through a book and obscure any text close to the margin - hence my larger right-hand margin.)

I'm thinking that an upgrade to a 350 looks like a good move all round!

[Shelleyleo]

I hadn't even noticed, but yes (I'd learned to kind of tune those numbers out for the most part on my old reader, so I hadn't even realized they weren't there on the 350!) The page number on the bar along the bottom of the screen will say either a single page number of total pagecount or will say a range of numbers of the total (IE: "172 of 222" or "172-173 of 222") but it is a ton better than my old reader which (once upgraded to ADE instead of an alternate ePub parser) only showed the ADE page number on the right margin and no total pagecount (unless you told it to jump to the end of the book so you could figure out what it thought the pagecount was and try to keep that in mind as you read if you cared to know how close to the end you were at a given time) - so I was thrilled to pieces to get a total pagecount shown all the time while I'm reading my ePubs I'd completely neglected in my joy to notice the ADe pgae numbers in the margin were gone *dances a jig* yay! Sure, they were gone and I didn't notice, but I can be happy about it now!

And regarding the link highlighting - it would be aggravating if you wanted links to be entirely "you have to know it's there" to find em (which isn't generally the case in my experience) but they aren't horribly in your face about it either, I hardly notice my navigation links at the heading of chapters anymore unless I need to use them, the grey isn't so jarring as I think a reversed color scheme on a highlighted link would be (though I know without a doubt I'd get used to that in a hurry if it were my reader's standard display option).

Anyway, if you're curious about anything else and how it displays on the 350 just let me know and I'll be happy to see what I can do to get an image of it, but so far I'm very happy about my 350 purchase. I do keep a stylus with me in addition to the one that came with the 350 just because I have seen the numerous "my stylus broke" posts and I'd rather just use one of the bazillion stylus(es? stylii?) I have kicking around when I am reading at home and just use the onboard stored one when really needed - though my finger as a stylus works generally as well for anything but very fine detail in highlighting down to an exact letter (so most of my highlights with my finger have an extra leading or trailing character or space when I make a note - meh who cares).