Kindle vs. Kobo: a Long-Term, In-Depth Comparative Review

[MariusMasalar]

Originally Posted by shalym

Marius, I think we need to just leave it at you have your ideas of how things should look and I/we have our ideas. Just out of curiosity, though...have you ever actually had a reader tell you that they LIKED the way your site was laid out? I'm sure that you've had designers tell you how optimal it was, but have you ever actually had a READER tell you that?

I have received positive feedback from a variety of people, some of whom were probably designers and most of whom were probably not, since I don't typically write content for a designer audience.

This is the first time I've received so much constructive criticism about the design itself, which tells me that either my usual audience isn't bothered, or isn't as willing to provide feedback as you guys. In either case, I'm grateful for the feedback as it's helped me improve the site. I can't please everyone, but I can hopefully find a more acceptable middle-ground.

[MariusMasalar]

Originally Posted by jandrew

Hmmm. I'd say check out a few more studies ... and you might also consider whether reading speed is something you want to be optimizing over user experience:

http://samnabi.com/blog/line-length-...ser-experience

cheers,
andrew

Interesting read, Andrew.

I have been experimenting with a tighter measure in response to these comments, but I have to say I think it looks pretty goofy on the current site, and implementing it counter-acts some of the type changes I've just made since it means you're back to having to scroll more. Haven't pushed any of the measure changes to the live site, but maybe if I find a balance I will. Perhaps something closer to 75 cpl?

[shalym]

Originally Posted by MariusMasalar

I have received positive feedback from a variety of people, some of whom were probably designers and most of whom were probably not, since I don't typically write content for a designer audience.

This is the first time I've received so much constructive criticism about the design itself, which tells me that either my usual audience isn't bothered, or isn't as willing to provide feedback as you guys. In either case, I'm grateful for the feedback as it's helped me improve the site. I can't please everyone, but I can hopefully find a more acceptable middle-ground.

Was the positive feedback on the design of your site or on the content? Were the people giving positive feedback reading on a desktop monitor or on a phone, or using a feed reader and not even seeing your site?

Shari

[MariusMasalar]

I was referring only to those who'd mentioned the site, so it was the design they liked. But what device they were reading on I can't say—they didn't mention and I didn't hunt for them in the analytics, I just accepted the comment and moved on. I assume it wasn't people reading in a feed reader though, as they would have no reason to comment on site design.

[JSWolf]

I've been looking up what's best to do with a widescreen monitor and one thing that keeps popping up is multiple columns.

[jj2me]

That was my type of comparison article. It's well-reasoned and presents the author's values, taking us on a detailed illustrated tour through the features. As a Kindle Paperwhite 2 owner, everything said about that device fit my experience also, so I confidently trusted the author's views on the Kobo.

One problem I saw was the emphasis on Kobo's support for Pocket, when it seemed that a direct Send-to-Kindle service would suffice for the author's needs, or even be superior because of Kobo's less reliable Pocket support. Since the Amazon version of Send to Kindle isn't supported on Safari, why not try something else that is supported on Safari, like this? It's been very reliable for me on Chrome, even more reliable than the Kindle version.

I also use a paid Android app "Push to Kindle" to send articles from my phone. Reading its home page, it seems it also has a desktop/laptop version that works on Safari, so there's another choice too, though I haven't used that one on the desktop (perhaps it isn't totally free?).

A shame about the Voyage not being available in Canada, because for U.S. readers, there's an expectation in an article entitled "Kindle vs. Kobo" that we'll see the Voyage in the comparison. Once it adds the Voyage, I suspect it will be the go-to comparison I'd recommend to anyone thinking of buying a new e-reader.

[MariusMasalar]

Originally Posted by jj2me

That was my type of comparison article. It's well-reasoned and presents the author's values, taking us on a detailed illustrated tour through the features. As a Kindle Paperwhite 2 owner, everything said about that device fit my experience also, so I confidently trusted the author's views on the Kobo.

One problem I saw was the emphasis on Kobo's support for Pocket, when it seemed that a direct Send-to-Kindle service would suffice for the author's needs, or even be superior because of Kobo's less reliable Pocket support. Since the Amazon version of Send to Kindle isn't supported on Safari, why not try something else that is supported on Safari, like this? It's been very reliable for me on Chrome, even more reliable than the Kindle version.

I also use a paid Android app "Push to Kindle" to send articles from my phone. Reading its home page, it seems it also has a desktop/laptop version that works on Safari, so there's another choice too, though I haven't used that one on the desktop (perhaps it isn't totally free?).

A shame about the Voyage not being available in Canada, because for U.S. readers, there's an expectation in an article entitled "Kindle vs. Kobo" that we'll see the Voyage in the comparison. Once it adds the Voyage, I suspect it will be the go-to comparison I'd recommend to anyone thinking of buying a new e-reader.

Thank you for the kind words, jj2me, I really appreciate it!

The reason I prefer the Kobo/Pocket integration is that it syncs both ways—getting articles onto my Kindle isn't the end of the world, but since I use Pocket to manage articles, it's great to have them waiting for me on the Kobo and to be able to archive them right from the reader.

When I send articles from Pocket to my Kindle, it not only takes extra steps when sending, it also requires that I then return to my Pocket queue to archive/favourite/etc. an article after I've read it.

Not the end of the world, but when you're reading lots of articles it's a huge improvement to have everything natively in sync.

As for the Voyage, I'm doing my best to get my hands on one up here. I could buy one and have it shipped up by a friend but I feel like as soon as I do that, Amazon will make it available for sale officially :P they've been very cagey about international availability details.

Needless to say though, as soon as I have one to review I will update the article accordingly

[blue_skies]

Originally Posted by MariusMasalar

This is the first time I've received so much constructive criticism about the design itself, which tells me that either my usual audience isn't bothered, or isn't as willing to provide feedback as you guys. In either case, I'm grateful for the feedback as it's helped me improve the site. I can't please everyone, but I can hopefully find a more acceptable middle-ground.

I am using an extra widescreen notebook, which is quite short vertically. Your site actually looks fine to me.

On the other hand, some sites like GoodEReader.com is completely unreadable for me because of that bar at the top which takes up the majority of my vertical space.

Here are screen caps of each to show what I mean. (I did not scroll to enlarge either page.)

[Oversized image removed by moderator]

On the GoodEReader site above, the most I get are three tiny lines of text before I have to scroll.

Below is the OP's site with a, thankfully, much smaller bar at the top:

[Oversized image removed by moderator]

More and more sites seem to be using those huge static areas that take up so much vertical screen space and don't disappear when you scroll.

GoodEReader.com is the worst of the worst, sadly.

Kudos to the OP for keeping that to a minimal height at least.

I wish I knew a way that I could disable or block that element from loading. Any ideas?

[MariusMasalar]

Hmmm what browser are you using? Looks like sites are reverting to system default fonts for you instead of using the correct styles.

Anyway, the fixed nav bars on sites aren't all coded the same way, so there's no easy way to selectively remove that element on all sites, but what you can do is use a browser plugin like Evernote Clearly (https://evernote.com/clearly/) or Readability (https://www.readability.com/apps) or the native reading view in Safari if you're on OS X to transform pages into a consistent, readable format.

Needless to say, saving them to Pocket/Instapaper/Readability accomplishes the same thing, but then you have to go to their sites or apps to read.

[blue_skies]

Originally Posted by MariusMasalar

Hmmm what browser are you using? Looks like sites are reverting to system default fonts for you instead of using the correct styles.

Anyway, the fixed nav bars on sites aren't all coded the same way, so there's no easy way to selectively remove that element on all sites, but what you can do is use a browser plugin like Evernote Clearly (https://evernote.com/clearly/) or Readability (https://www.readability.com/apps) or the native reading view in Safari if you're on OS X to transform pages into a consistent, readable format.

Needless to say, saving them to Pocket/Instapaper/Readability accomplishes the same thing, but then you have to go to their sites or apps to read.

Thank you so much for the suggestion and link to Evernote Clearly! That is fantastic. For the GoodEReader.com article I screencapped above (where I could only see a tiny bit of the photo and just a few words about buying an ereader in Canada) it now looks like this with the Evernote Clearly add-on:

[Oversized image removed by moderator]

I can now read almost the entire text of the article without scrolling, which is really awesome.

To answer your question, I'm using Firefox, and I do have the defaults set to relatively large text because I sit a bit back from the screen and don't like to squint or strain my eyes. But no other sites expand the text like that. And the top element takes up about four times the vertical space that my Firefox tabs, address bar, and bookmark toolbars all take up. That is especially bad because my notebook is this one - http://www.amazon.com/Toshiba-Satell...ite+U845W-S410

-- which is great if you like an unusually wide screen, but it is quite low on vertical space. So a large bar at the top of a page, like the one embedded on the GoodEReader site only leaves me about two inches of space to view the actual blog content!

Most pages look fine though, even with my large text preference. Here is what your post here looks like for comparison:

[Oversized image removed by moderator]

Anyway... thanks so much for your reply here. It was tremendously helpful to me.

[MariusMasalar]

Sure thing, glad it was helpful!

[eschwartz]

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[eschwartz]

Marius -- kudos on the well-balanced review!

Far superior to the many reviews that read as though the author never used an ereader in their life.

Originally Posted by MariusMasalar

I can't turn the entire footnote into a link to go back because I have distinct hyperlinks to things in the footnotes themselves. So far you're the first to tell me that the symbol isn't distinctive enough (it's styled in bright blue, like the rest of the hyperlinks) or that the footnotes are difficult to navigate so I'm inclined to leave that as it is.

I'm sure this is not surprising to you but I for one found the back links to be immediate and intuitive... although granted I think I prefer the browser back button for footnote navigation, I cannot fault your implementation, and I am going to assume you had a good reason for using it (you'd better ).

[eschwartz]

And on the note of calibre being hideous -- I wouldn't go that far (although I am no expert)... but there is no doubt that aesthetics is a distant consideration. I am pretty sure no specialist graphics designers have ever touched the code, though.

I too am of the opinion that aesthetics can take a running jump, and the intuitive functionality is a priority.
But if someone were ever to take the job of renovating said aesthetics, I wouldn't protest. I'm not holding my breath -- several people have popped into the forums with *ideas*, were told "patches are welcome", and never came back.

Interesting how many people leapt to take offense at the description, though.

[radius]

Originally Posted by eschwartz

I too am of the opinion that aesthetics can take a running jump, and the intuitive functionality is a priority.

I am one of those people who think Calibre is too ugly to bear (and sluggish, and takes too many clicks etc) to the point where I do all my ebook management FROM THE COMMAND LINE. That should tell you all you need to know about the aesthetics of Calibre.


Marius,

I really like the formatting of your article (as of Mar 30, 2015). I wonder if many of the people who complained are used to surfing the web with their browser maximized at all times?

Sadly, you have such a different ereader usage pattern than I do that you mostly address things I don't care about (read-it-later, about-the-book, bookstore features) or disagree with you about (the quality of Kobo's text rendering and layout)