Touch Nook STR: Issues, Bugs, Annoyances, and Petty Quibbles

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by ncguy68

I persnoally wish they would offer the option to turn hypenation off entirely. The latest software update for the Nook Color also added hypenation and it can be very annoying when you have a lot of hypenated words. The Nook Color seems to average 4-8 per screen....too many.

I played with NT for a couple of hours at the store (I was prepared to buy one but they didn't have stock on hand), and hyphenation was one of the things I was particularly interested in since the latest Adobe RMSDK supports it and I've been reading discussion about it.

Prior to seeing it in action, I thought I would like the hyphenation. But it seemed to me that some of the hyphenation breaks are strange, as if it is algorithm- rather than dictionary-based. Algorithmic hyphenation is probably necessary for quicker layout (and smaller system footprint) but I'm not sure I could get used to it if that is the case. I'll bring my Kindle in next time to double check a few... <g>

It's really annoying not to be able to look up a hyphenated word.

Hyphenation would be good if it were dictionary based and still quick, and default for headings was 'off', and if there were an option to turn it off altogether. Yes, you can 'fix' the ePub but there should be some reasonable defaults, because of all the epubs that were put together without any sort of awareness about hyphenation. The same issues pertain to webkit-based iBooks, which added hyphenation support recently as well, so it seems to be one of those things that needs some refinement.

I also thought that the combination of left justification and hyphenation looked rather bad. But I've been reading electronic text for so long now without hyphenation of any kind, perhaps my judgement of such things has become skewed. I think I saw an instance where a heading was hyphenated, but the heading did not continue onto the next line. So there are probably some bugs as well.

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My interest in NT is also due to my interest in getting a stronger foothold in ePub-ness. I read quite a bit of ePub content on my iPod Touch and of late the rather strange 'hybrid' Entourage Pocket eDGe I picked up on Woot recently (Entourage has pulled the plug on it and they were heavily discounted), but I like the focus of a dedicated reader.

My overall impression of Nook Touch is mixed.

I was disappointed to learn that the TOC view only supports level 1 entries. I have a lot of computer books in ePub format and they generally have multilevel TOC's. From my other ePub reader app experiences, I have come to expect support for this, either by listing all NCX levels with indents to reflect hierarchy, or with levels that expand/collapse to show sublevels (like Sony or my eDGe). As a Kindle owner, I have 'NCX envy', and I had been looking forward to getting a full share of it with Nook. But not anymore.

I found the Text settings a bit quirky. Selecting 'Publisher Settings' resulted in unbelievably bad typography in all the samples I looked at (zero leading). I'm not sure whose fault that is (B&N or Adobe) but somebody should fix it. And why can't I adjust text size without publisher settings getting turned off? They should be completely independent. But as long as Publisher Settings option is as unusable as it appears, it doesn't really matter.

I still haven't found a reading system that lets me reduce margins consistently as much as I'd like to. These are small screens, there's no space to waste as far as I'm concerned, and reading systems should just ignore any margins set in the ePub (except for indents/offsets etc.) and let users choose how much margin around the text they prefer (even to near zero). At least on Kindle there's a simple hack to reduce it as much as you like. Nook Touch is a little better with this than my eDGe (no margin adjustment) or iPod Touch (depending on the app, either no margin adjustment or one that's ineffective much of the time), at least with the samples I viewed.

Text selection was more awkward than with my iPod Touch (which can be awkward enough given the smaller screen), and there were situations where it seemed impossible to make the desired selection at all, at least at the smaller text sizes I prefer to read with. The menu that comes up after making a selection gets in the way if the selection is close to the bottom of the screen. But overall navigation is better with touch than on my Kindle without touch.

I wanted to try navigating to a footnote/endnote and back to see how well that worked on Nook (something annoyingly challenging on my iPod Touch and eDGe, labor intensive but trivial on Kindle), but none of the samples I looked at had any.

The web browser needs some work to integrate it better and I would like to think B&N sees the need to improve it at least to where it is somewhat usable. It looked like it would download files (I got a download window to come up from a context menu) but I was not able to navigate to a webpage where I could try this (the store wifi was really slow and I had to give up trying). I know this is not a tablet, but a little browser can go a long way, as I've found with Kindle.

I also wanted to try PDF but none of the demo units seemed to have any PDF files on them. I understand it's pretty limited, but that it does support reflow (unlike Kindle) and that would work adequately for at least much of the PDF the content I'd be viewing on there.

The Fast Page(TM) feature was not as smooth as I'd imagined from reading descriptions. I tried an image-laden computer book and a text only novel. I wasn't ever able to stop on the desired page, which flipped by before I could lift my thumb. Some practice would probably help, and even so it is probably quicker than navigating via TOC or page by page when you are looking for something 10 or 20 pages away.

I saw a lot of 'flashing' page turns despite the reports that it was only every 6th page or so. I was seeing flashing more or less randomly and don't think I ever got 5 consecutive page turns without seeing a 'flash'. At least with the relatively brief outing I had, the intermittent flashing seemed more distracting than the consistent flashing of my Kindle or eDGe.

Landscape reading mode (for both ePub and PDF) seems like an obvious and simple and useful thing to add, but it's not there now.

I will still probably move ahead with a purchase, despite my gripes (that is the subject of this thread after all). It seems like the best dedicated ePub reader out there right now, and with an update or two, it will be better.

[EldRick]

You can (usually) reduce the publishers' margins by running the file through a conversion in calibre - set the margins to 0.0 in the Page Setup dialog.

[anamardoll]

Originally Posted by EldRick

You can (usually) reduce the publishers' margins by running the file through a conversion in calibre - set the margins to 0.0 in the Page Setup dialog.

I would like to hear more about that. Is it the epub to epub conversion?

[afv011]

Originally Posted by anamardoll

I would like to hear more about that. Is it the epub to epub conversion?

You could also open the file in Sigil and tweak the margins in the CSS.

[anamardoll]

Originally Posted by afv011

You could also open the file in Sigil and tweak the margins in the CSS.

Which I don't want to do for 350+ books, as I'm sure you can imagine.

[John F]

After reading on a Nook Touch last night:

Dictionary needs to be more functional. Should be able to type in word, and it would be nice to look up words when using the dictionary. For example: Looked up "Hegemon" and the definition was "Someone who practices Hegemony". I couldn't figure an easy way to look-up Hegemony.

Font size selection needs finer granularity.

Smallest margin size isn't small enough.

Finer granularity on line spacing.

When holding the reader in left hand, tapping the screen on the left side page backs.

Buttons are too hard to press. The line designating the buttons are inaccurate. Would like to configure buttons so they all page forward.

When tapping screen to page forward, will follow a link if you tap on it. I find this cumbersome when starting a book with a table of contents.

Hiccups (slow) when paging back on a chapter boundary.

Didn't notice ghosting at first, but now I can see it fairly often. Would like an options for frequency of blanking screen.

Only a single level table of contents.

Would like more memory for side loaded content.

Shelf management seems like it would be cumbersome with a large number of books. Would like PC access to shelves.

Would like a way to delete books directly from the device.

[John F]

I'm seeing some strange behavior with Caecilia font.

1) Go to the text page
2) Select Caecilia font
3) Select Malabar (display changes on text in top of page to reflect change)
4) Select Caecilia font, nothing happens

At this point, if I choose any font but Caecilia, the displayed text changes, but nothing happens when I pick Caecilia.

I reproduced this with two different Epubs.

Anyone else see this?

[SCION]

Originally Posted by John F

I'm seeing some strange behavior with Caecilia font.

1) Go to the text page
2) Select Caecilia font
3) Select Malabar (display changes on text in top of page to reflect change)
4) Select Caecilia font, nothing happens

At this point, if I choose any font but Caecilia, the displayed text changes, but nothing happens when I pick Caecilia.

I reproduced this with two different Epubs.

Anyone else see this?

Just tried it. Don't have this issue.

[detayls]

Originally Posted by John F

I'm seeing some strange behavior with Caecilia font.

1) Go to the text page
2) Select Caecilia font
3) Select Malabar (display changes on text in top of page to reflect change)
4) Select Caecilia font, nothing happens

At this point, if I choose any font but Caecilia, the displayed text changes, but nothing happens when I pick Caecilia.

I reproduced this with two different Epubs.

Anyone else see this?

I have seen this too. There's a cheap fix.

It went away when I powered off and then back on. (Hold in the back power button until the Nook powers off and then wait 10 seconds and Hold in the back power button until the Nook powers on again.)

Now it will work.

[SteveDuck]

I found a bug in the footnotes feature. When reading an epub, an asterisk (*) appeared in a lighter font. Out of curiosity, I touched it. Turns out to be a link to a foot note at the end of the chapter. The page forwarded to the page displaying the footnote...and a back touchbutton appeared at the top of the screen, presumably it would return to the page you touched the (*) from. Neat! In my instance the footnote spanned multiple pages.

HERE IS THE BUG:

When I page forwarded to read rest of the foot note the "Back" touch button disappeared. A pageback did not return it, so I was basically left at the end of the chapter. I had to repeatedly pageback hunting for the departure point (*).

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by SteveDuck

I've found the new Nook STR impossible to use when it is placed inside a plastic ziplock bag. This is a bummer as I use this device at the beach and I'd like to protect it from the elements while in use. I'll bet a TrendyDigital WaterGuard would be unusable as well.

B&N could easily fix this by adding a setup option to disable touchscreen input for a session and allowing user to reactivate by pushing the nook button.

Why would you place a touch screen reader in a plastic bag? Of course it won't work. The bag is going to end up touching the screen.

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by anamardoll

I would like to hear more about that. Is it the epub to epub conversion?

ePub to ePub with Calibre is not a good idea. It can rather mess things up. Especially embedded fonts.

[SteveDuck]

Why would you place a touch screen reader in a plastic bag? Of course it won't work. The bag is going to end up touching the screen.

You never know until you try!

Besides, there are products being advertised for the New Nook which bear a strong resemblance to a fancy plastic bag such as this:

TrendyDigital Waterguard @Amazon.com

[anamardoll]

Originally Posted by JSWolf

Why would you place a touch screen reader in a plastic bag? Of course it won't work. The bag is going to end up touching the screen.

People with eReaders put them in plastic bags to protect them in environments with lots of moisture -- pool areas, gyms, bathrooms. Basically anywhere with sweat or water or really high humidity.

A tight enough bag might stretch across the bezel, but...

Just one more reason why touch screen devices need a way to disable the touch screen temporarily with a physical key, I think.

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by SteveDuck

I found a bug in the footnotes feature. When reading an epub, an asterisk (*) appeared in a lighter font. Out of curiosity, I touched it. Turns out to be a link to a foot note at the end of the chapter. The page forwarded to the page displaying the footnote...and a back touchbutton appeared at the top of the screen, presumably it would return to the page you touched the (*) from. Neat! In my instance the footnote spanned multiple pages.

HERE IS THE BUG:

When I page forwarded to read rest of the foot note the "Back" touch button disappeared. A pageback did not return it, so I was basically left at the end of the chapter. I had to repeatedly pageback hunting for the departure point (*).

Properly authored ebooks should have 'back' links coded into the footnote label to take you back to where the footnote is referenced (assuming there is a 1-1 correspondence between references and the footnote). At least most books i've used that have footnotes do this. Did you try touching the footnote label?