As an E-Ink device lover, I bought many E-Ink devices, and use them mainly for reading ebooks, chatting, note taking, and internet surfing. Most E-Ink devices work great for book reading and note taking; however, for using them as a tablet or phone, there's still a long way to go. One of the insufficient part for me is the experience of browsing the web. I haven't found a suitable browser yet for E-Ink devices. So, I decided to customize one from an Open Source project I found on Github (it's called FOSS Browser). Here are some features I added which I found useful for an E-Ink device:
- Reader Mode (remove ads, header, side panel, footer, etc)
- Vertical Reading (suitable for Chinese, Japanese, Korean languages)
- Save web page as epub files
- Save web page as pdf
- Save web page as a long image
- page up/ page down with dedicated buttons, or physical volume keys
- remove un-necessary screen repaints (e.g., UI animations)
- Support assigning gestures pageUp / pageDown for tool bar and navigation button
- Make navigation button more visible no matter webpage background color is black or white
- Remove button press visual feedback
- Support Vi key bindings when using physical keyboard
Screenshots
see attachments
If you are also looking for browsers that are suitable for your E-Ink device (with Android based platform), you can take a look at the browser I modified. Hopefully it's also useful for someone too.
Medium post: Web Browser for E-Ink Devices
Github Link
Demo Video Link
Binary Download Link