why you love your kindle

[shalym]

Originally Posted by DNSB

My wife picked up a book which was a total disaster in terms of the styling and was damn near unreadable. I've attached a screenshot of what it looks like on a PW with the narrow margins and medium spacing. I killed 10 minutes converting the in-line styles to a CSS stylesheet, cleaning up the font-family settings that seemed to be assuming I would be reading on a Windows computer, the large left/right margins, etc.

Eh--I've seen worse formatting. That would bother me, but not enough to make me take the trouble of changing it. The only thing that would tempt me to change it is when authors/publishers embed stupid stylized fonts that are hard to read, and I can't change it. Anything else, my mind just ignores after the initial "ewww".

Excessive spelling and grammar errors, on the other hand, make me crazy.

Of course, past experience tells me that generally neither of these will cause me to go to the trouble of "fixing" the book...I generally just read it (if possible) or give up on it (if ignoring and reading isn't possible). In the second case, I do complain to the author, or publisher, or vendor, or in one notable case, all three.

I guess I'm just lazy.

Shari

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by shalym

Eh--I've seen worse formatting. That would bother me, but not enough to make me take the trouble of changing it. The only thing that would tempt me to change it is when authors/publishers embed stupid stylized fonts that are hard to read, and I can't change it. Anything else, my mind just ignores after the initial "ewww".

Excessive spelling and grammar errors, on the other hand, make me crazy.

Of course, past experience tells me that generally neither of these will cause me to go to the trouble of "fixing" the book...I generally just read it (if possible) or give up on it (if ignoring and reading isn't possible). In the second case, I do complain to the author, or publisher, or vendor, or in one notable case, all three.

I guess I'm just lazy.

Shari

In my case, with enough practice and automating much of the process, it doesn't take that long for most books to clean up the formatting so I don't mind indulging my wife's desire to have a book she considers readable.

I have tried complaining to the author/publisher/vendor but in most cases, it's been cold pancakes and no honey. In one case, the author/publisher didn't appear to know the difference between reign, rein and rain and was quite happy to inform me that they were not misspellings so she didn't see why I would complain.

I did wonder about an author for whom writing that Queen Victoria had "rained" for over 63 years was not an issue nor was her apparent ignorance of the fact that she had written her book 3 years after Queen Elizabeth II had reigned for longer than Queen Victoria so referring to Queen Victoria as the longest "raining" monarch in British history was incorrect.

[hobnail]

Originally Posted by SatanicSaint

Is it a Project Gutenberg book?

Project Gutenberg books can be annoying but are easy to clean up and fix. But some many of the books I've gotten from Amazon are rather amazingly ham-fisted with their CSS. I used to try and fix their CSS but it's so much work that I've resorted to simply deleting all of theirs and replacing it with some basic minimal CSS that does the job. The main downside to this way is when they use spans for bold and italic so I've taken to looking for that and adding their class to my .bold and and .italic.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by DNSB

My wife picked up a book which was a total disaster in terms of the styling and was damn near unreadable. I've attached a screenshot of what it looks like on a PW with the narrow margins and medium spacing. I killed 10 minutes converting the in-line styles to a CSS stylesheet, cleaning up the font-family settings that seemed to be assuming I would be reading on a Windows computer, the large left/right margins, etc.

That is one awful eBook. This is why most self-published authors should find someone able to create an eBooks to do it for for them.

I'll clean up their mess if they'd like to pay me for my time.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by shalym

Eh--I've seen worse formatting.

What eBook(s) have you seen that were worse?

My one worse eBook was a an eBook where there were some errors in the CSS and because of this ADE tossed out the entire CSS and you got just defaults. I was able to fix it and then read it.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by hobnail

Project Gutenberg books can be annoying but are easy to clean up and fix. But some many of the books I've gotten from Amazon are rather amazingly ham-fisted with their CSS. I used to try and fix their CSS but it's so much work that I've resorted to simply deleting all of theirs and replacing it with some basic minimal CSS that does the job. The main downside to this way is when they use spans for bold and italic so I've taken to looking for that and adding their class to my .bold and and .italic.

Using Diaps Toolbag plugin, it's trivial to convert bold/italic spans to <b> and <i>. I've gotten rather good at fixing sloppy eBooks. What I really cannot stand is how the publisher tries to make the eBook look like the pBook and it's a fail. It doesn't work.

[Eures]

I hate my kindle because of the web browser, which after the Kindle Keyboard was deliberately made worse.

[cvkemp]

I live my Kindles, I have no use for the browser though. I only use my Kindle for what it is meant for an ebook reader

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Eures

I hate my kindle because of the web browser, which after the Kindle Keyboard was deliberately made worse.

You will hate most eBook Readers then as they don't do well browsing.

Dump the Kindle an buy an Onyx Books Android 10 based Reader and put a better web browser on it.

[Eures]

Onyx Boox Poke is definitely an option, but it pisses me off that Amazon kept the browser and made it worse. If the function of the Kindle was meant only to read ebooks, they would have removed it entirely. In an ebook reader the browser is used only to comfortably read Wikipedia and must be able to reduce, comfortably, the most complex pages to text. It doesn't have to compete with tablets. In this sense Boox Poke with Android is even exaggerated.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Eures

Onyx Boox Poke is definitely an option, but it pisses me off that Amazon kept the browser and made it worse. If the function of the Kindle was meant only to read ebooks, they would have removed it entirely. In an ebook reader the browser is used only to comfortably read Wikipedia and must be able to reduce, comfortably, the most complex pages to text. It doesn't have to compete with tablets. In this sense Boox Poke with Android is even exaggerated.

I would stay away from the Poke because the screen is too small at 6". I would go with the Nova 3 at 7.8".

[Eures]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

I would stay away from the Poke because the screen is too small at 6". I would go with the Nova 3 at 7.8".

The screen seems to me to be as big as that of the Kindle, but it has a very narrow frame ...

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Eures

The screen seems to me to be as big as that of the Kindle, but it has a very narrow frame ...

The PW4 also has a 6" screen. It's the same screen as the Poke. But once you try a larger screen, you won't want to go 6".

[cvkemp]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The PW4 also has a 6" screen. It's the same screen as the Poke. But once you try a larger screen, you won't want to go 6".

I disagree I had the Oasis with the 7 inch screen and I prefer the Paper white screen

[John F]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

The PW4 also has a 6" screen. It's the same screen as the Poke. But once you try a larger screen, you won't want to go 6".

Originally Posted by cvkemp

I disagree I had the Oasis with the 7 inch screen and I prefer the Paper white screen

+1.

I've tried an Aura HD, a H2O, and a Forma and I stuck with a Glo and Glo HD.