Aura HD Kobo Aura HD Impressions Thread

[Haesslich]

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

To be honest I rarely use the home screen except to get to the shelves. If I wanted to go on lt to the same shelf it is faster opening a shelf on the home screen by as much as 2 minutes but I rarely (almost never) want to do that.

And I am curious. I am pretty sure I can get the current home screen back if I want to, and probably will have to evntually anyway.

May not even try the 2.x thing, but nice to have the option.

Helen

Incidentally, any shelves you opened are shown as boxes on the 2.4.1 home screen. I use those all the time, versus the old "hit Library, hit Bookshelves in that menu, swipe to the shelf I want, hit that shelf, select book" method. Now it's "select shelf showing in home screen, select book".

[speakingtohe]

Originally Posted by Haesslich

Incidentally, any shelves you opened are shown as boxes on the 2.4.1 home screen. I use those all the time, versus the old "hit Library, hit Bookshelves in that menu, swipe to the shelf I want, hit that shelf, select book" method. Now it's "select shelf showing in home screen, select book".

I am aware of that, but it is of little use to me as I said. I rarely read the same series twice in a row, and read 5 0r 6 books a week so by the time I want to go back to a series it is usually replaced.

This feature might be useful to me if you could chose the shelves to have on he home screen, but AFAIK you can't and it seems hit or miss as to what t decides to replace.

I had stopped reading one book and thought that it or it's shelf would remain o the home screen for a bit so I could easily go back to it, but both were replaced two books later. Not a big deal as I could easily fnd it in the book list or by search or less easily by opening the shelf menu, but I just don't see the point of this random behavior in an ebook reader. I could almost assume it is Kobo's way of saying see we can open shelves just as quickly as other ereaders can open collections, we just chose not to.

Helen

[larrymohr]

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

...

This feature might be useful to me if you could chose the shelves to have on he home screen, but AFAIK you can't and it seems hit or miss as to what t decides to replace.

I had stopped reading one book and thought that it or it's shelf would remain o the home screen for a bit so I could easily go back to it, but both were replaced two books later. Not a big deal as I could easily fnd it in the book list or by search or less easily by opening the shelf menu, but I just don't see the point of this random behavior in an ebook reader. ...

Helen

In firmware 2.5.1 on the Aura, the Home screen is a graphical display of your most recently accessed books/apps/shelves.
It is arranged in a series of Tiles in three columns. The Tiles range in size from 1/2 the column height to 1/8th the column height allowing a possible 11 books to be displayed.
Each Tile can be "dismissed" by long pressing on it and selecting "dismiss" from the context menu.
By dismissing the Tiles you don't want, it is easy to have the Tiles to the shelves or extras (I like the word scramble) you want, always available.
If you load a number of new books on your Aura, instead of them each using separate Tiles, a single Tile is created called something like "New Books".

In firmware 2.5.2 the only differences I have been able to detect so far are that the SYNC tile CANNOT be dismissed and it uses up all the space below the Main book Tile. This reduces the possible number of books shown from 11 to 9, annoying but not fatal.

Larry

[Jaden]

Originally Posted by larrymohr

In firmware 2.5.2 the only differences I have been able to detect so far are that the SYNC tile CANNOT be dismissed and it uses up all the space below the Main book Tile. This reduces the possible number of books shown from 11 to 9, annoying but not fatal.

Also the space on the right isn't used fully in 2.5.2.

I find it really annoying because I neither want nor need the sync tile and if it has to be there for whatever reasons, at least the space below and on the right should be used.

[larrymohr]

Originally Posted by Jaden

Also the space on the right isn't used fully in 2.5.2.

I find it really annoying because I neither want nor need the sync tile and if it has to be there for whatever reasons, at least the space below and on the right should be used.

I see that. The middle column seems to use all the height but the rightmost column doesn't quite fill. However, anything that "falls" off then end, reappears once there is room.

It's not a big deal with me since I had to open 7 books, a shelf, the word scramble and the sketch app before the whole screen was used up.

I don't usually have more than 4 books going at once, however I do like to keep the reading stats open.

Larry

[speakingtohe]

Originally Posted by larrymohr

In firmware 2.5.1 on the Aura, the Home screen is a graphical display of your most recently accessed books/apps/shelves.
It is arranged in a series of Tiles in three columns. The Tiles range in size from 1/2 the column height to 1/8th the column height allowing a possible 11 books to be displayed.
Each Tile can be "dismissed" by long pressing on it and selecting "dismiss" from the context menu.
By dismissing the Tiles you don't want, it is easy to have the Tiles to the shelves or extras (I like the word scramble) you want, always available.
If you load a number of new books on your Aura, instead of them each using separate Tiles, a single Tile is created called something like "New Books".

In firmware 2.5.2 the only differences I have been able to detect so far are that the SYNC tile CANNOT be dismissed and it uses up all the space below the Main book Tile. This reduces the possible number of books shown from 11 to 9, annoying but not fatal.

Larry

None of it is fatal Larry I guess I just like things more orderly and less random.

Seeing the home screen doesn't upset me even if it does look like s small childs sticker book. I just do not find it very useful.

Helen

[geormes]

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

None of it is fatal Larry I guess I just like things more orderly and less random.

Seeing the home screen doesn't upset me even if it does look like s small childs sticker book. I just do not find it very useful.

Helen

My feelings exactly.

I just don't spend all that much time on the home page. I haven't taken the time to dismiss all the fluff on the home page because it would be investing more time than it is worth.

[Jaden]

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

Seeing the home screen doesn't upset me even if it does look like s small childs sticker book. I just do not find it very useful.

I'm completely different - I find the homescreen very useful.

I just wish it would be easier to decide what is shown on the screen and what isn't. Being able to dismiss tiles is nice, but it would be even nicer to be able to fix some tiles to the screen (so they don't get bumped off by other tiles) and even better to have a kind of list to select tiles I want to be shown. But I guess that won't happen...

Anyway I like that I can finally have my shortlist back on the homescreen, have easy access to books, shelves and extras I often use - and that the book I'm currently reading doesn't get bumped off the screen when adding new books (and also the others I've last opened stay on my homescreen or at least re-appear after dismissing the newly added tiles).

Even if you just wanted books on the screen - simply dismiss everything else and enjoy the fast and easy access to the books.

Also if you add annotations or highlights quite frequently - tap on the highlight/notes section of the tile and it opens the list of annotations. Very convenient.

[speakingtohe]

Originally Posted by Jaden

I'm completely different - I find the homescreen very useful.

I just wish it would be easier to decide what is shown on the screen and what isn't. Being able to dismiss tiles is nice, but it would be even nicer to be able to fix some tiles to the screen (so they don't get bumped off by other tiles) and even better to have a kind of list to select tiles I want to be shown. But I guess that won't happen....

Being able to decide, as I mentioned in an earlier post would make it useful perhaps. And maybe there is a feature on it other than the standard last opened book that I would find useful if it didn't find it mildly annoying and could bring myself to delve into it farther.

Originally Posted by Jaden

Anyway I like that I can finally have my shortlist back on the homescreen, have easy access to books, shelves and extras I often use - and that the book I'm currently reading doesn't get bumped off the screen when adding new books (and also the others I've last opened stay on my homescreen or at least re-appear after dismissing the newly added tiles).

Even if you just wanted books on the screen - simply dismiss everything else and enjoy the fast and easy access to the books.

Also if you add annotations or highlights quite frequently - tap on the highlight/notes section of the tile and it opens the list of annotations. Very convenient.

The fact that you keep having to dismiss things is one of the irritating things for me.

It is as clean as possible and then all of a sudden there is another little sticker added. And often the ones I might get crazy and use are rearranged.

I would far rather have better reading functionality and better and faster shelf navigating and sorting that is consistent.

I don't annotate, but I have heard of problems in that area too.

Still nice that you are happy

Helen

[Jaden]

Originally Posted by speakingtohe

Being able to decide, as I mentioned in an earlier post would make it useful perhaps. And maybe there is a feature on it other than the standard last opened book that I would find useful if it didn't find it mildly annoying and could bring myself to delve into it farther.

I especially like that I have the shortlist and some shelves I currently use frequently on the screen, as well as extras. The access is much easier, especially for the extras.

The fact that you keep having to dismiss things is one of the irritating things for me.

It would be easier if there was an option to permanently dismiss certain tiles - unless you reactivate them.

Me, for example, don't care much about my "last sync" or about "recommended" or "related to" - if I wanted to see any of this, I would access it via menu.

But I guess that's wishful thinking...

It is as clean as possible and then all of a sudden there is another little sticker added. And often the ones I might get crazy and use are rearranged.

I was worrying about that but got used to it pretty quickly. The last one used gets promoted to the top of the middle row (or gets a new tile there).

But I'm used to that from the library (recent reads) and different other programs - only that it looks a little different.

Of course I can understand that it can be annoying. It would be easier if there was a way to "fix" the tiles so they can't be bumped off the screen and keep them in a certain order/position.

I would far rather have better reading functionality and better and faster shelf navigating and sorting that is consistent.

I'm okay with the (K)ePub reading functionality.

CBZ/CBR is quite okay, too (only that is has the same ghosting bug as PDF has). Funny that they show "Annotations" in the menu though there is no way that I have found to add annotations to CBZ. But besides of that it works well. You can even rotate pictures 360° (which might be useful for some).

PDF could be better, though. For example I can turn a page in CBZ/CBR even if it's zoomed in by tapping, in PDF I have to scroll to the side and than tap an arrow which is annoying.

And it's annoying that when I turn the page in landscape mode I'm not in the top left corner of the PDF but in the lower left. It's correct in portrait mode, but most PDFs would be easier to read in landscape.

Also I wonder why the menu pops up when I tap anywhere in PDF reading mode. I am used to page forward by tapping, so I often get the menu up unwanted.

PDF reading should be more like CBZ reading IMHO (where I can swipe and tap to page forward and which generally works quite similar to (K)ePub reading).

Shelf navigation could be much better (and faster). I'd also love to see "multi-level" shelves (like fantasy > wheel of time) so I could sort all my books by genre and then series and/or author for example.

I don't annotate, but I have heard of problems in that area too.

I don't annotate either, at least not much. But yes... heard of problems, too.

And of course they should work everything that is related to reading long before they should even think about tweaking the homescreen. Though eventually they could make it better... maybe.

Still nice that you are happy

Thanks.

I'm sorry that you're not as happy with the Aura homescreen (though it's not my fault, I know ).

[flips01]

Sorry if this is already answered, but can I have the Search function default to searching my Library, and not the Kobo store?

[davidfor]

Originally Posted by Jaden

CBZ/CBR is quite okay, too (only that is has the same ghosting bug as PDF has). Funny that they show "Annotations" in the menu though there is no way that I have found to add annotations to CBZ. But besides of that it works well. You can even rotate pictures 360° (which might be useful for some).

You can't directly add an annotation. But, pressing the top right corner of the screen adds a bookmark. Then in the annotations list, you can add a note to the bookmark. This works for PDFs as well.

[paola]

Originally Posted by flips01

Sorry if this is already answered, but can I have the Search function default to searching my Library, and not the Kobo store?

on my Mini, the library is the default, but I wonder whether the last search is kept as default? My WIFI is always off, wonder whether that may affect this, too.

[Icey]

Hello,
I would like to acquire a reading light to read large pdf file. (100 MB)
Most of them are in A4 format.
So I wanted to ask you if the machine is responsive and fast when turning pages and when zooming

I also wanted to know how is the management of margins. A pdf file that does not contain is that the Kobo will add margins?

Also, in case there are margins, is that it is possible to remove like the iPad with Goodreader application (ie it defines the new margins ourselves) ?

The screen is large enough to read pdf files in landscape mode ?

Thanks
Icey

[taming]

Originally Posted by flips01

Sorry if this is already answered, but can I have the Search function default to searching my Library, and not the Kobo store?

When you are in "Books", the search default is your library. When you are reading a book, the default is to search in the book. It is only on the home page that the default is the store. I guess you will have to tap library before you search from there.