Kobo currently (and for the past few years) has some of the best e-ink ebook readers available. In terms of what they are capable of, Kindles don't even come close. Sadly, the Kobo interface and ease of use leaves much to be desired. I've spent much time and trial/error formatting books to optimize for both Kobo and Kindle devices; but to really get the most of a Kobo, some steps need to be taken by the User.
I will not go into the user made patches here. They are great, and more info can be found on the mobileread kobo developer forum for those, but here I'm focusing on what you can do with a stock Kobo device that doesn't require loading your own firmware, (or anything else than can in any way risk bricking the device.)
This guide is for people who are happy with sideloading books over a USB cable with Calibre.
The first point is that Kobo actually has two e-book reading applications installed. There's an Epub reader based on Adobe SDK (required for books with ADOBE DRM, such as books from libraries, or purchased from Google Books.). If you've been downloading epubs and copying them to your Kobo, this is the reading application you've been using. Second is Kobo's own reading app. It works with books that have been specially modified and end with the file extension .kepub.epub ; colloquially known as KEPUB format. Each of these reading applications have their set of advantages and bugs.
Advantages of Kepub:
- Much faster response to page turns.
- Ability to Zoom (and pan) on Images.. Great for maps, or pictures with small print text.
- Much more responsive to text selection, if you like to make annotations or text excerpts.
- Better image display, with a fine grained dither that makes the e-ink 16 shakes of grey look just like a full greyscale image.
- Reading Time estimate,, see the mostly accurate remaining time to read the current chapter, the entire book, as well as as a graphic chart that shows the relative length of chapters.
- Footnote links will pop up as a window, instead of jumping around to a different page in the book. Also, the small footnote links are much easier to press without accidentally turning the page.
- Font selection will fall back to a font that has any missing glyphs. That means, books with unusual or foreign language Unicode characters will display properly, even if the font is not embedded in the book. You can Sideload a font for languages / scripts that Kobo does not support. I like Arial Unicode MS as a catch all.
To take full advantage of these benefits, the first thing I'm going to do is create file named kobo_extra.css. This file needs to be copied directly on the Kobo's filesystem (the drive that is attached when Kobo is plugged into a pc.).
It will contain the following:
Code:
body {
margin: 0 !important;
padding: 0 !important;
}
body>div {
padding-left: 0.2em !important;
padding-right: 0.2em !important;
}
Next is to install the following 3 plugins in Calibre. If you haven't used plugins before, they are pretty simple. Open the Preferneces dialogue in Calibre, and the Plugins button is on the bottom. Press the 'Get New Plugins' button. Search for and install the KoboTouchExtended, KePub Metadata Reader and KePub Metadata Writer plugins.
Back in the Plugins window, search for KoboTouch. You should see both a KoboTouch and KoboTouchExtended plugin. Hightlight the KoboTouch one and Disable it.
Highlight the KoboTouchExtended Plugin and click the Customize Plugin button. In the 'Collections, Covers and Uploads' tab, put a checkmark in the "Modify CSS" option.
Use the Ok and Apply buttons to close all the windows. Now, when you connect the Kobo to the computer and use Calibre's "Send to Device" Button, the epub book will be sent to the Kobo in Kepub format. (DRM must be removed first. That's just a given, and common sense if you're stuck with a DRM source.)
My last trick is to enable the option of full page reading. Full page will remove the Header and Page counter footer at the bottom of the every page and allows you to use the whole screen for reading, (with a margin you control by the usual margin slider.)
With the Kobo attached to the PC, open the KoboEreader Drive, and the .kobo/kobo Directory. We'll edit the Kobo eReader.conf file. However, you should use a text editor that will preserve the Unix text file format. Windows users are recommended to install and use Notepad++ to modify this file.
Scroll to the [Reading] Section, and add the following line:
fullScreenReading=true
Save the file, disconnect the Kobo as normal. This by itself will not have changed anything, however, when you open the Reading Setting while reading a book, there is now a new option that was previously hidden, "Show Header and Footer." Remove the check mark to get use of your full screen. Note that when you are in full screen mode, the 'margin' slider will not always update the display on the fly. You have to adjust your margin, press the home icon to close the book, and re-open it, for the new margins to be in effect.