Allow showing time left in current chapter/book

[Kythe42]

Originally Posted by theducks

There is no Visual clue where to click.

Right click the top -center of the page, the READER menu should appear

It doesn't matter where I right click. I only get the vertical menu that doesn't have anything to click on for preferences.


If as Terisa said(if I'm understanding correctly), you only get that when reading through the content server, I have no clue how to do that. I've only ever accessed the content server through Calibre companion on a tablet. There's no ability to read anything within that app, and it simply opens up the books in my app of choice, Moon Reader in my case. When I'm on my laptop I use the Ebook viewer, which I thought was what was meant by the browser, and that's the only way I've ever done it.

[theducks]

Originally Posted by Kythe42

It doesn't matter where I right click. I only get the vertical menu that doesn't have anything to click on for preferences.


If as Terisa said(if I'm understanding correctly), you only get that when reading through the content server, I have no clue how to do that. I've only ever accessed the content server through Calibre companion on a tablet. There's no ability to read anything within that app, and it simply opens up the books in my app of choice, Moon Reader in my case. When I'm on my laptop I use the Ebook viewer, which I thought was what was meant by the browser, and that's the only way I've ever done it.

Were you viewing (reading) the book with the builtin BROWSER viewer?

[NSILMike]

Originally Posted by theducks

Were you viewing (reading) the book with the builtin BROWSER viewer?

yes (if you mean opening the book in Calibre,) and also via Calibre Companion on a tablet. I see no reason at all why I would prefer 'browsing' to the content server on a device when Calibre Companion is available. But perhaps there are reasons I'm not aware of....?

[Kythe42]

Originally Posted by theducks

Were you viewing (reading) the book with the builtin BROWSER viewer?

I thought I was. The thing I'm reading the books in is labeled E-book viewer. It was installed with Calibre, but it does open in a separate window. This is the only way I know how to read ebooks in Calibre, but I sense that the browser viewer is something different based on all the replies, and I have no idea how to get to it if it is different.

[Terisa de morgan]

Originally Posted by NSILMike

Something is very different between what you are doing and what we (myself and Kythe42) are doing. I am opening a book in Calibre running on Windows7 on my laptop, then right clicking the resulting book. Various options (table of contents, goto, etc) open up but nothing related to preferences.

I'm not opening the book in calibre. I'm starting the content server, connecting to it in a browser (firefox for myself), opening the book in firefox and, then, the preferences are there.

[Kythe42]

Okay, I have no idea how to connect to the content server through Firefox(I've never read my ebooks that way and didn't even know it was an option), and honestly I don't really want to read my ebooks that way. I'm very disappointed that this option isn't available for the built in ebook viewer. I also find the term built in viewer browser to be very misleading since you're doing it through a program other than Calibre, which wasn't made clear in any of the replies up until now.

Anyway, thanks for finally clearing up the confusion. I hope the developer will eventually add this option for the built in ebook viewer.

[NSILMike]

Understood. But can you tell us if there are any significant advantages to that? Why not just open it in Calibre and/or Calibre Companion?

[Terisa de morgan]

Originally Posted by NSILMike

Understood. But can you tell us if there are any significant advantages to that? Why not just open it in Calibre and/or Calibre Companion?

I don't know. I don't read my books in calibre, this has been the first time I've open a book through the content server. There is a chance, however: Imagine a home network with two computers. One of them is running calibre gui and calibre content server. From the other one (where you don't have neither calibre nor calibre companion), you can browse the libraries and read the books.

[Kythe42]

I would find this to be inconvenient because you'd have to have Calibre open and the content server running on the first computer to be able to access it on the second one. I've had issues with it disconnecting while importing books through Calibre companion on my tablet, so I wouldn't trust it to stay open while actually reading a book. Maybe it would be nice to use on my tablet possibly if it would sync between the ebook viewer on my laptop and the content server and actually stay connected. I still would rather have a standalone app to read my ebooks through though than use my web browser.

Edit: I did attempt to check out the browser viewer, but I got an error that said "You must allow calibre to use IndexedDB storage in your browser to read books."

I did get it to work on Chrome, but that's not my preferred browser. It then made me download the book, which is ridiculous since there's already a copy on my computer. Actually there was already more than one copy on my computer since Calibre insists on placing a copy in its on directories rather than where I initially save all my ebooks. Though there is a sync option, I guess it only syncs with the content server and not the Calibre ebook viewer. It also just generally seems slow and clunky. Definitely not ideal for my purposes.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by Kythe42

I would find this to be inconvenient because you'd have to have Calibre open and the content server running on the first computer to be able to access it on the second one. I've had issues with it disconnecting while importing books through Calibre companion on my tablet, so I wouldn't trust it to stay open while actually reading a book. Maybe it would be nice to use on my tablet possibly if it would sync between the ebook viewer on my laptop and the content server and actually stay connected. I still would rather have a standalone app to read my ebooks through though than use my web browser.

I use a headless server running in a VMWare environment to allow me to access my library either from home or using a NATted address from an external site. For me, it was as simple as installing calibre, opening preferences and setting the content server to run when calibre starts. While I don't use calibre companion, I haven't had any issue with connecting to the server using a web browser (Firefox by choice) to read or download books. The only annoyance was when I first used this setup, I needed to remember to stop calibre on the server before running calibre on my computer. This is now taken care of by the batch file that starts calibre on my computer which stops calibre on the server and then restarts it when I exit from calibre.

[Kythe42]

Well, I'm glad you have a setup that works for you, but I only understood about half of what you said, and it seems far too complicated for someone with only average technical skills. Also Firefox was the browser that I got the error on, which is frustrating as it is my preferred browser.

Regardless, I have far too many tabs in my browser already and really would prefer to read my ebooks outside of my browser(not to mention it automatically opening in full screen mode is annoying). A stand alone cross platform app would be vastly preferred, or at least a way to sync the built in ebook viewer with other apps such as Moon Reader. Again, I hope that these header/footer options will be added to the built in ebook viewer for those that prefer to use it.

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by NSILMike

Something is very different between what you are doing and what we (myself and Kythe42) are doing. I am opening a book in Calibre running on Windows7 on my laptop, then right clicking the resulting book. Various options (table of contents, goto, etc) open up but nothing related to preferences.

The new option is in the Content Server's Viewer which you access via a web browser such as Chrome, Firefox, Edge, Safari, etc. See calibre User Manual: The calibre Content server

BR

[BetterRed]

Originally Posted by Kythe42

Okay, I have no idea how to connect to the content server through Firefox(I've never read my ebooks that way and didn't even know it was an option), and honestly I don't really want to read my ebooks that way. I'm very disappointed that this option isn't available for the built in ebook viewer. I also find the term built in viewer browser to be very misleading since you're doing it through a program other than Calibre, which wasn't made clear in any of the replies up until now.

Anyway, thanks for finally clearing up the confusion. I hope the developer will eventually add this option for the built in ebook viewer.

Kovid has posted (several times) that he intends folding the enhanced features of the browser viewer into the desktop viewer in a future release.

BR

[Kythe42]

Originally Posted by BetterRed

Kovid has posted (several times) that he intends folding the enhanced features of the browser viewer into the desktop viewer in a future release.

BR

Thanks for letting me know. I'm not on this forum often, so I haven't seen other topics in which this has been stated.

Funny enough, I got Firefox to work with the content server on mobile version, but trying to read ebooks that way just opens them with the Calibre ebook viewer that I normally use, but the position isn't synced.

[DNSB]

Originally Posted by NSILMike

Understood. But can you tell us if there are any significant advantages to that? Why not just open it in Calibre and/or Calibre Companion?

It's a bit hard to open calibre when I'm not sitting at a computer at home? My setup allows me to access my library from any place where I can get a network connection. A lot more devices with web browsers with HTTPS support compared to the number that can run calibre companion? My web browsers never get booted from the app store? And probably the most important reason, it was fun getting the content server up and running and my Kobo ereader collection has no difficulty downloading a book or two when I start jonesing for a new read.