Wish list for first firmware update

[cicra1978]

My number 1 issue with the Kobo is the lack of PDF reflow. I use it with Adobe Digital Editions books from my Library, which is great, but the readbility sucks because the PDF font sizes are so small and zooming in is a painful way to over come this.

Number 2 is more of an issue with the store. I'd like to be able to download samples of books from the store. I see them on the website, but there is now way, that I have discovered, to download them on to the device.

For the record I love my Kobo. Beautiful UI and so simple to use.

[Mememememe]

Make it searchable. We should be able to search by page number at the very least, preferably by word as well.

As it stands, the reader is less convenient than a physical book, because with a physical book it's easy to flip to something in another part of the book that you want to re-read for whatever reason. Simply going to the beginning of a chapter isn't good enough.

[juiceless]

Originally Posted by Mememememe

Make it searchable. We should be able to search by page number at the very least, preferably by word as well.

As it stands, the reader is less convenient than a physical book, because with a physical book it's easy to flip to something in another part of the book that you want to re-read for whatever reason. Simply going to the beginning of a chapter isn't good enough.

How would this work? There's no keyboard.

[Mememememe]

Originally Posted by juiceless

How would this work? There's no keyboard.

For page numbers it's simple -- the numbers 1, 2, 3, 4 ... up to zero are on the screen and you move the cursor to select the numbers.

You can have the alphabet, too -- DVD recorders have this sort of feature so you can add titles to your disk. Admittedly, it's a bit of a labour, but searching for a single word isn't too difficult.

But the page search would be pretty simple. Without some kind of search function, the reader is inferior to a book for single-title reading.

[lchen]

I agree, there has to be a better way of quickly browsing through the book in a non-linear fashion (ie. as one may jump to pages with reading the Bible, Textbooks, Study Guides, Instruction Manuals).

[corona]

I've just watched M. Tamblyn, in the video about Shortcovers and Kobo, say that consumers want text to move by pages rather than scrolling.

On the Kobo, PDFs magnified enough to be readable only move 4 or 5 lines (except at the end of a page) when the up/down buttons get pushed.

This is pretty much scrolling, and really annoying. It would be a lot better if this worked the way it does with ePubs, i.e. that down/up change a whole page of text.

I don't mean a page of the original PDF each time, but just like it is with ePubs. You get a screen's worth each time.

I realize that conversion to ePub is a way around this, but I think it will always be useful to be able to read PDFs directly.

[Stinger]

Corona,
This is called PDF "Reflow". I've seen posts from the Kobo team mention they are looking into adding it in. They certainly know people want it, but I doubt we'll see it in the first firmware upgrade.

I've just watched M. Tamblyn, in the video about Shortcovers and Kobo, say that consumers want text to move by pages rather than scrolling.

I think you misinterpreted what s/he meant by scrolling. He probably meant scrolling as in sliding pages down smoothly, like scrolling down a long webpage with your mouse-wheel. They're saying the way the kobo works now, by flipping page by page, is what people want rather then the web-page type scrolling behavior, and I'm sure most people would agree, including yourself

I remember trying to read something in reader software like 7 years back that had "automatic scrolling", where the text slowly scrolls down the screen... I hated it.

Anyway, when you said "This is pretty much scrolling", what you're actually talking about is what everyone else calls panning (basic pan&zoom).

[anidel]

I am using feedbooks.com with Custom PDF download to have the eBooks I want in a nicely formatted PDF for my Kobo (Using Cybook Gen 3 settings as it's 6" as our Kobo).

[artificial]

+1 for the ability to jump to a specific page!

[thepossum]

My top firmware update requests -

1 - "instant on" option - rather than select the book I'm reading over and over, I would like to have the choice of continuing immediately from where I left off reading. If it's because it's taking too long to re-load the book I'm reading, I'm sure you can simply save the text of the currently rendered screen at powerdown.

2 - "pdf reflow" - read just the text from a pdf

3 - "landscape reading" - sometimes it's just more comfortable to read sideways on a wider screen

4 - "read while charging" - even if I plug the kobo into a simple usb wall charger, it still sits there in the mode where it wants me to load new books, and I can't do anything with it until I unplug it

5 - "sdhc" - others have noted that the kobo acts as a SDHC reader, even when it won't itself access the data. More space available would be very useful!

6 - "more formats" - I assume that certain file formats were excluded to save on costs (ie. programming, licensing, etc), so there's no .mobi or .lit and so on for now. But it should be relatively simple to add .html/.htm and .txt reading.

7 - "bluetooth" - I have the Kobo iPhone app, but can't sync to my kobo with it over Bluetooth. And I have a Bluetooth receiver on my computer, but cannot make use of it on my kobo.

[dwprice]

Battery Issue

- if Kobo runs out of power, why not display an image saying "BATTERY EMPTY. RECHARGE." just before it dies so when I look at it I don't think it's just frozen and poke the reset role repeatedly

[SameerH]

Originally Posted by dwprice

Battery Issue

- if Kobo runs out of power, why not display an image saying "BATTERY EMPTY. RECHARGE." just before it dies so when I look at it I don't think it's just frozen and poke the reset role repeatedly

Have you been spying on us the last few days? ;-) Hear this one loud and clear.

Great suggestions guys, please know that we are definitely listening and all suggestions are being heard.

The first update definitely will not cover everything mentioned here, but our goal is to continually improve the platform over the coming weeks with more updates.

[videomilk]

Hi, just got mine yesterday and was bitterly disappointed none of my epub books can change font size. I had a nook (got stolen) and never had one issue so yeah +1 on the ability to change font size. Also the page turn speed needs to be a little quicker. Apart from those issues the device is great and feels a lot better than the nook did to hold, mainly the weight and backing. I miss my little touch screen but it was overkill anyway.

thanks and appreciate your work.

[mlstein]

Videomilk--check out the thread on this forum about the font-resize problem....

[videomilk]

Originally Posted by mlstein

Videomilk--check out the thread on this forum about the font-resize problem....

Yeah I checked it out, works on some, I get errors on other, I'm using the mac program. It's just one of the basic functions that should be working out of the gate. Hopefully we get an update soon.