Nook Color Home Screen and Daily Shelf

[mad5427]

Hello. I'm pretty new to the site. I've been lurking and reading and have been waiting to get an ereader for a long time.

I got the Nook Color last night and so far it is an amazing thing. I don't need the bells and whistles of the iPad or Galaxy, but like the touch and internet, etc.

My only problem so far is this. I have a LOT of ebooks that I've obtained that are in the epub format. They load just fine. I also have a bunch of comic books that I converted from cbz format to pdf. They look AMAZING ON THIS THING!

Does anybody know if you can put stuff you didn't buy from B&N on the home screen and the daily shelf. I'd like to be able to access some stuff that I own that I didn't get from them from the home screen. I can't find a way to load anything other than their proprietary stuff on the home screen. It's making that home screen and daily shelf worthless for me and it's a shame.

HELP! It's not a huge deal, but it's really annoying that I have all this space on the home page and stuff I want to put there and they seem to have locked everything but stuff you buy from them out of that area.

[wb182]

Yeah, i noticed the same issue. Moreover, that once i removed the pre-installed user guides and children's books from my Home Screen & Daily Shelf...i couldn't figure out any way to add them back there. So it's not just an issue with side-loaded content....it's really an issue with *everything* in the "Library" section.

[Tess89]

Hopefully its nothing a little hackery won't fix. B&N seems to want control over how people use the device, therefore tech minded people will waste no time finding ways around their restrictions.

[mad5427]

In the library, stuff that you've bought from them, just touch over the item and hold down. A menu will appear with options. Stuff purchased from BN will have an Add to Home option. Side loaded stuff does not have that option. That's what I'm a little upset about.

The library organization and ability to create custom shelve's etc. is nice, but I have having this useless home screen and daily shelf. I don't have anything purchased from them and don't plan to be getting much. I already have soo much stuff and would like to use that space.

I think either they will open it up or somebody will hack it. That's why I'm not too concerned. Being run on android makes me think so much will be possible with this thing in the coming months.

I'm just very happy that it's a responsive, well made machine. I'm happy with so much about it. Just that stupid locked down home screen is my only true gripe.

[SCION]

Originally Posted by mad5427

In the library, stuff that you've bought from them, just touch over the item and hold down. A menu will appear with options. Stuff purchased from BN will have an Add to Home option. Side loaded stuff does not have that option.

Thanks. I was pondering this.

[Noah98]

Originally Posted by mad5427

Hello. I'm pretty new to the site. I've been lurking and reading and have been waiting to get an ereader for a long time.

I got the Nook Color last night and so far it is an amazing thing. I don't need the bells and whistles of the iPad or Galaxy, but like the touch and internet, etc.

My only problem so far is this. I have a LOT of ebooks that I've obtained that are in the epub format. They load just fine. I also have a bunch of comic books that I converted from cbz format to pdf. They look AMAZING ON THIS THING!

Does anybody know if you can put stuff you didn't buy from B&N on the home screen and the daily shelf. I'd like to be able to access some stuff that I own that I didn't get from them from the home screen. I can't find a way to load anything other than their proprietary stuff on the home screen. It's making that home screen and daily shelf worthless for me and it's a shame.

HELP! It's not a huge deal, but it's really annoying that I have all this space on the home page and stuff I want to put there and they seem to have locked everything but stuff you buy from them out of that area.

Hey, can you post how you convert your cbz's to pdf's. I'm looking for a method that retains the image quality. Thanks!

[mad5427]

I just spoke to customer service about not being able to put side loaded items on the home screen. She said it was in the user manual and in the service agreement. She then couldn't find it anywhere. She talked to management and was told that they will find it and she will email it to me.

I told them that they were misrepresenting on their website and nobody would be able to tell in a store due to there being no outside content on display models in store. The website has an area where it talks about personalized experience and organizing your home page. Nothing about it only being BN sold items. Anywhere. I would like somebody to find anywhere a place where it states that the home page is only for BN purchased content. I can't find it.

It just says to drag and drop whatever it is onto your homepage. You can't even do that. You can drag and drop from the daily shelf. But not from anywhere else. Even highlighting BN purchased stuff, you still have to choose add to home. No dragging or dropping.

I know this is such a minor thing, but it is very much misrepresented. I was under the impression that my homepage was going to be customizable and I could put my favorite things on there, be it pdf's, books, comics, videos. Just put stuff on the home page for easy access. I know it's not a full tablet, but they are advertising this home page as a repository for all of your favorite stuff. "They'll be there every time you reach for your nook color." That home page could be very useful. I really hope they code it in down the road that other content can be placed there.

I'm more upset that it's not sold with that info being available. It's kind of hidden for you to discover on your own.

I spoke with a Stephanie at the 800.843.2665 at 12 noon on Friday, November 19th, 2010. As of that moment, the website nor anywhere else seems to have the data that she says is in there stating the home page is for BN purchased content only.

I have a feeling within the next hour or so it'll show up in some sort of documents clear as day.

[SCION]

Good for you!!! Love your passion. You remind me of someone.

[boswd]

yeah I haven't begun to sideload my documents from other sources yet. Oh well I'll just create a speical "My Shelf" for it, it's quick enough to access it

what I would do mad5427 is go over to the BN.com website and on the Nook/nook color forums, there is already a wish list for what people would want in the upcoming update, put in "being able to add Folders to home screens or add sideloaded docs to one of the homes screens."
I know this can be done, I have a droid X and you can add folders to any of your homescreens(yeah, take that iPhone) , so it shouldn't be too much to ask for.

From my experience as a nook owner, they really seem to listen.

[mad5427]

Noah. I just used Jomic. I load the cbz file and then click on the convert option under the file tab.

I choose pdf, I keep the current image format, I make sure that the check box for limiting page size is turned off and then I choose a target folder.

You can actually batch convert by adding all your cbz files in that convert window. It'll just do one at a time and the pdf will have the same name as the cbz file. It seemed to keep the exact same quality.

I loaded a few of the pdf's and opened them on the NC and they looked great in portrait mode. One page at a time. You can swipe zoom in and out as well. To go from page to page on the pdf you swipe up. The pdf pages seem to be in a top to bottom format. Not sure if that can be changed, but it was no biggie. Just swipe up go to page 2, 3, etc. In landscape, it still showed only one page at a time but was fit to screen. You can zoom in nicely there to get about the top third of a page at at time and just scroll through the page as wanted.

Comics look amazing on this. They really do.

Jomic is free and I use it to read comics on my computer and it works very well to create the pdfs to bring over. I'm very very happy with how it reads the pdf's. I hope somebody is looking further into a comic app that actually reads the original cbz's or adds side swiping functionality or doubple pages in landscape mode.

But, right now, it works pretty perfectly as is.

[mad5427]

It's funny. This is actually such a minor inconvenience. As mentioned elsewhere. Their open library organization is really fantastic. I can still easily access whatever I want and have already created custom shelves for things I want to get to quickly.

The home screen isn't really necessary. It's just a minor thing that just bugs me. It's more that they don't have it advertised than anything. I even understand why they have it that way, to make their stuff stand out in the forefront. Cool.

Overall, everything else has seriously been pretty fantastic. My life and work revolves around my laptop and my smartphone (an old bb storm which when dead will most likely become something android next year). I can do everything I need to on them. It's why I didn't get a full tablet. This will truly do everything I want. Read books very nicely. Comics look amazing. It's a nice first run at a browser that I think will only take an update or two to get much better. It's good for now. I think magazines look great and might even explore that. With some recipe apps and a little more video and it's the perfect simple media device I was waiting for. Just that much more than a pure ereader to make it worthwhile.

[SCION]

Originally Posted by mad5427

Overall, everything else has seriously been pretty fantastic. My life and work revolves around my laptop and my smartphone (an old bb storm which when dead will most likely become something android next year). I can do everything I need to on them. It's why I didn't get a full tablet. This will truly do everything I want. Read books very nicely. Comics look amazing. It's a nice first run at a browser that I think will only take an update or two to get much better. It's good for now. I think magazines look great and might even explore that. With some recipe apps and a little more video and it's the perfect simple media device I was waiting for. Just that much more than a pure ereader to make it worthwhile.

Great summation!

[dirtygreek]

I'd like to be able to bypass the silly home screen completely, actually, and just map the n button to the library. It'll be rooted soon enough...

[mad5427]

Could somebody explain to a person who's a little unfamiliar with this stuff what rooting can do here? Will it still look exactly the same and have all the same features just with added functionality? Will it be a completely different look, etc? Is it like wiping your computer clean and installing an OS from scratch and you just put what programs you want on it, like a pure Android 2.2 OS and just have apps loaded?

I apologize for the lack of knowledge. My only experience with this is the 1st gen bb storm and I loaded cracked OS's all the time. It was just more advanced and fixed versions of what was already on it. To the naked eye, nothing looked different. Is rooting a device like this similar?

I'm on the graphic software using side of technology and don't have to go deep into the back end of things so my knowledge base is a bit lacking there.

[Tess89]

Originally Posted by dirtygreek

I'd like to be able to bypass the silly home screen completely, actually, and just map the n button to the library. It'll be rooted soon enough...

I was under the impression that books could be accessed directly from the home screen. Is that accurate? If not, I too would rather bypass it altogether.