We see that pdf renders everything the same whether on a big or small display, except the text and images will be tiny on a small display.
My understanding is the so-called "reflow" by the K2pdfopt library in KOReader internally replaces the original document with a different document in which the lines of text are detected as units and are chopped up and layed out in a new temporary document. But if it encounters a text frame with a box around it, it will treat it like a unit and just resize the whole thing.
In html, the same document is used whether the display is large or small. Each character is treated as a unit and is truly reflowed so that less characters are displayed per line the smaller the display.
Getting back to your example web page, if I open it up in LibreOffice, the side elements on the right (tech pledge and Creative Commons notice) are identified as follows:
Code:
<!--[if lt IE 9]>
<script type='text/javascript' src='https://www.zylstra.org/wp/wp-content/themes/sempress/js/html5shiv.min.js?ver=3.7.3' id='html5-js'></script>
<![endif]-->
TML: <meta name="viewport" content="user-scalable=no, width=device-width">
According to the mobilereader forum I linked to above, KOReader may not be able to handle certain styles that a web engine would:
Quote:
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Originally Posted by pazos
Anyway, KOReader uses Coolreader engine and that doesn't fullfit the "full CSS support" needed by OP.
Probably it (the coolreader engine) is the best epub render that doesn't rely on a web engine, but that's another history.
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So if I save the web page as a complete web page from desktop Firefox, both Firefox and Chromium on my desktop can reopen the file+folder and render it in the original style.
But if I shrink the window to the size of my Kobo display, the side elements get pushed to the bottom of the page, just as they are in KOReader, the Nickel web browser, EinkBro on android,etc...
So at least for this example, it seems you would need an ereader with a big display, probably running Firefox in desktop mode to get that desktop experience.
Maybe you have other examples where this wouldn't be the case.
I'm actually pretty okay with the imperfect, but still fairly intact rendering by KOReader. Maybe someone can come up with another idea?