Firmware 4.23.15505

[geek1011]

Originally Posted by compurandom

I'm not totally happy with the look of the new scroll bar, and it makes some of the screens look cramped, but as far as I can tell, there's nothing lost to make room for it except the page numbering. And I think pulling the scroll bar is a *lot* easier than keying in a page number, at least when I'm not sure what page I need.

That's useful and everything for smaller libraries, but what happens when you have 150+ pages? It also looks slightly off-balanced.

It has annoyed me for multiple firmware revisions that they took the wifi icon off the menu screen when reading a book, and I can't tap on the battery icon there either to get a number like I can on the home screen and others.

A workaround for the WiFi is to add `nickel_wifi` actions to the reading menu using NickelMenu. This won't tell you if it's on or off, though. But, why do you need access to the WiFi icon while reading? It should turn off automatically unless you're in the browser or if you have ForceWifiOn, and I can't think of a reason you'd need shell access immediately while in the reader.

[geek1011]

Originally Posted by davidfor

Mystery? It was obvious to me, it's an Erlenmeyer flask (though I didn't remember the name). That fits with the beta or "experimental" nature.

Same for me. I was under the impression this is kind of a standard icon when talking about beta/experimental features...

[Uncle Robin]

Originally Posted by 93terp

Hello Friday!

Agree that the change to the left slider for scrolling through My Books leaves a lot to be desired.

One more question about this - I've seen several mentions of the "left slider" - but mine is on the right, without any action on my part?

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Uncle Robin

Thanks for your detailed response. An interesting point of view. It differs from mine and is ipso facto wrong, but interesting nonetheless.

I've been wrong before and hope to live long enough to be wrong again

[ZodWallop]

Originally Posted by Uncle Robin

One more question about this - I've seen several mentions of the "left slider" - but mine is on the right, without any action on my part?

Yours is the same as everyone else's. I cop to writing left slider, myself.

[Svens]

Interesting. After updating 4.23.15505 on my KA1, I have a strange section "What's new?". From old firmware

[astoriedsoul]

DELETED

[MGlitch]

I like the new home screen. Notably because it allows for NM to be it’s own menu rather than be part of the old all in one menu.

I agree that the old “my books” should be changed over to either a second collection/author/series selection or a fifth currently reading book. I think the former would look better though I may get more use out of the latter.

[Cootey]

Originally Posted by geek1011

Ugh. GoodEReader has decided to do some more plagiarism:



And, they're taking it out of context too. I didn't say that it's definite, just that it's a possibility. Kobo has added stuff that's unused before, and you also need to keep in mind that libnickel is used on the other platforms (to different extents) too.

I saw that, too. Lifted with no attribution. His egregiousness knows no bounds.

Next time, set him up with fake news. LOL




Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

[compurandom]

Originally Posted by geek1011

That's useful and everything for smaller libraries, but what happens when you have 150+ pages? It also looks slightly off-balanced.

I have 37 pages of collections, and my largest collection has 204 pages.
The scroll bar works ok for these... and the normal swipes are still there for single page turn. I agree it looks off balanced. But if you move it, it'll be harder to use, so...

Rarely in these lists is it helpful to jump to a specific page, unlike a book with a inline TOC and no structural TOC. (Some day I'll write a tool to fix that.)

A workaround for the WiFi is to add `nickel_wifi` actions to the reading menu using NickelMenu.

Yup, I've been using that since it was added to NM.
Mostly when I'm reading a book, I want to turn OFF wifi after looking something up online or following a link (and adding it to pocket or something). But it would be nice to have the icon in the top bar to remind me it's still on before my battery drains dead.

[Cootey]

Alright. I’ve had some time to play around with the update on my Clara HD.

• I agree that the task bar of icons along the bottom feels Nook-like, but that isn’t a bad thing. The menu was clumsy and time consuming to tap through. GUI complaints aside, this is faster. I don’t agree that the homepage is more cluttered now, but I understand why some feel that way. There is now a task bar of icons along the bottom that wasn’t there before. But there’s also no menu icon at the top. I’ve chosen to like this change because I found the menu odious to deal with.

• I love the much hated slider. On my Clara, the scrolling is zippy and so much more convenient. Perhaps that experience is different on older Kobos. I have none left to test it on. As for pagination, I never used pagination to remember where things where. I used relative memory to know where books were based on the books around them. I didn’t care about the numbers. They changed depending on the content. This update is faster for me. I’ve compared it to my daughter’s unupdated Clara. The thumbnails load faster, the scroll is zippy versus the clunkier page method, and, as others have already mentioned, pagination info is shown as you scroll. The new method’s performance is superior on the Clara.

• I still dislike the mostly useless text links at the bottom., but then Kobo didn’t change them in this update. If only I could choose which links were there. I liked it better in the past when I could specify a link to Pocket articles there. Yesterday, there was a link to Pocket, but today there are links to borrowing books thru overdrive and to accessing my user manual. I use Libby for my overdrive needs and I almost rarely need the manual. The links remain as Kobo’s intrusion upon my home screen. I am still very grateful that they are not ads, however.

I didn’t realize there was a patch out there to get rid of those links. I don’t usually patch my kobo. I like to keep it pristine and untouched. This is a personal preference. I just want to use my kobo to read and not treat it as a project. I’ve mentioned this before. I have done plenty of projects (like home brewing my 3DS so I can FTP into it, setting up GameCube emulation on my WiiU, or setting up port forwarding for VNC, Calibre, and web servers across my network and subnetwork). It’s not a boast. I’m trying to contrast my typical geeky whims from the need to just sit down and relax without tinkering. But I’m very tempted to apply the patch to get rid of those links now that I know it exists.

• I see that the Series sorting still lists single books. This wouldn’t be a problem if the single book was x of y in a series, but each standalone book is its own series. I wish there was a way to filter out the lone wolves from the pack. Fortunately, scrolling through them with the slider is a breeze.

• The border around the web browser might serve a GUI purpose, separating the browser experience from the book reader view. I don’t mind it since the margin is so minimal and I do my browsing on my Mac, iPad, or iPhone anyway. I do hope that they’ve tweaked the web browser’s energy consumption. I can’t convince my daughter to stop reading fanfic on her Kobo instead of her iPhone. Her Clara is constantly out of juice. It’s likely the constant WiFi connection that is draining the battery.


All in all, I’m pleased with the changes. Would somebody please clarify what change to the lists they are noticing? I must not have paid attention too closely before, and I didn’t think to look before updating my daughter’s Clara.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk Pro

[compurandom]

Originally Posted by Cootey

I do hope that they’ve tweaked the web browser’s energy consumption. I can’t convince my daughter to stop reading fanfic on her Kobo instead of her iPhone.

I don't read a lot of fanfic, but when I do read stuff like that I tag a batch of them with pocket, and then sync the pocket article to the kobo and read it offline.

This probably only works if you don't have to log in to read it, and pocket works with about 80% of websites (or maybe more, maybe it has gotten better).

For ones it doesn't work with, I use the pocket+ calibre plugin to download, to an epub from the broken pocket link. That should work even with password protected sites, I think, but it might take some fiddling with the recipe.

For the remaining ones that don't work, if the piece is more than 5 minutes of reading, it's worth my time to scrape it out of the web browser and use calibre to manually build an epub and side load it. I've found a couple of tricks that make that work go fast. (about 5 minutes) I've yet to find a page that doesn't work for. (Hint: go into brower's developer mode, drill down to the div containing the meat of the page, and rightclick/save and import that into calibre, and then there may be some small cleanup work to do in the calibre epub and metadata editors.)

[93terp]

Originally Posted by Uncle Robin

One more question about this - I've seen several mentions of the "left slider" - but mine is on the right, without any action on my part?

as is mine...

[93terp]

Originally Posted by twowheels

Is Kobo pushing OTA updates yet? I've done a sync, and no update is showing up for me.

I'm not sure whether I care to download it manually, or just wait...

My Forma got the update OTA earlier this afternoon.

[93terp]

Originally Posted by ZodWallop

I wish they would also borrow the 'stack by author' so that you wouldn't only have list view when looking at authors.

I'm pretty sure I've seen this done on my home screen using the patches. IIRC, it shows up on the top line (line with currently reading book) if you search for an author & choose a book to read that way.