Decent 3rd party web-browser for e-ink devices?

[LivresInOz]

Does anyone know of a web-browser for devices like Kobo, that at least has:
- find-on-page
- easy scrolling
- ability to change font size?

I know not many people like to browse the net on their reader - and usually Im one.

But sometimes I have to read long legal cases online and it would be nice to use my Kobo, because its light and easy on the eyes.

I know Kobo has an inbuilt one but its not great (eg. doesnt even have 'find on page', it seems, which is CRUCIAL for me!)

I was thinking of an app similar to the quality of Koreader...

[elinkser]

If you install the KOReader app, it includes a terminal, which I've used to run elinks browser - however, I had to crosscompile the elinks and openssl source on my Linux desktop.
I can post the steps I used to crosscompile, and/or provide the statically-linked binary (but that would require trust that the binary is secure), if you're interested.
***EDIT***
Posted crosscompilation for elinks and wget
here.
If you can't crosscomoile wget, NiLuJe's kobostuff provides a package that includes a cURL binary.
---
On the Kobo developer forum I am also asking for help getting the einkvnc binary to work on my Clara, which would allow me to view my android screen on my Kobo display.
I should add that if the articles you read are long, it is worth just sharing them to a print-to-pdf app, and serving the pdf to your Kobo using an android webserver. This is easy to set up using just 3 apps you install on your android phone. (Bill Farmer's Print app,OI File Manager, and lWS lightweight Web Server, all from FDroid. You can even zip multiple files, rename the .zip to .pdf, download it as one file, rename it and unzip the pdfs in KOReader.

**EDIT- You don't even need a browser on KOReader to transfer files from your phone.
Just run SSH server on KOReader and transfer by SFTP from Ghost Commander+SFTP Plugin(open source but available from Google Play or Aurora) installed on your Android.
**Unfortunately,this was buggy on one of my devices.
What DID work was using the web browser on my phone to copy the html address of the target, then paste this into a ConnectBot (from F-Droid) SSH connection to the Kobo to "wget <address>".
Reliable and easy!

[lensmann]

Originally Posted by LivresInOz

But sometimes I have to read long legal cases online and it would be nice to use my Kobo, because its light and easy on the eyes.

Do you have the ability to download the text of the cases, or are you stuck reading them online? If you can download them, the easiest thing to do is to turn them into epubs (or kepubs, if they have footnotes) and load that file onto your Kobo. I read dozens of lengthy legal judgments in a typical week, and it's quite easy to do once you find a workflow that works for you - there are lots of options available for the conversion.

[elinkser]

Yes, even html works well in KOReader(font resizing, fulltext reflow, search, hyperlinks) without conversion to another format.
My suggestion of conversion of a web page to PDF on your phone has the advantage of not requiring a desktop while still conserving images (edit - of course with a desktop images could also be conserved by saving "complete" web page in firefox and converting to epub in calibre OR transferring the image folder along with the html file to the Kobo).
KOReader reflow even allows font resizing and text reflow for PDFs, but my test of the fulltext search did not work properly with the converted PDF document.(Edit - unless you turn off reflow - not ideal if you do alot of searches.)
Also if you save an html file on your phone, you can still webserve it to the kobo, but you have to rename it temporarily to a .pdf extension or else the kobo web browser will open the .html file instead of downloading it. You want to download it as a ".pdf" and then use the KOReader filemanager to rename the file to end in ".html", if you want to use KOReader (and not the Kobo web browser) as the fileviewer.
Of course if you do your browsing on the desktop and not your phone, it's probably easier to just plug in your kobo and transfer the file!

[elinkser]

lols...
From KOReader's built-in terminal, I just issued the command:
wget --output-document mobi.html "www.mobileread.mobi/forums/showthread.php?t=349634"
and it saved this web page as mobi.html. So neither desktop nor android is required - just an internet connection and your Kobo!
Edit - this is possible even with the stripped-down version of wget that comes bundled with KOReader - not requiring the full wget version that you can crosscompile using my link above.

[elinkser]

Another wget tip:
To avoid having to type in a long URL to the wget command, you can first search the URL link using:
wget --output-document url.html "html.duckduckgo.com/html/?q=%3Amobileread.mobi+%223rd+party+web-browser&22"
Then open the downloaded url.html in KOReader, copy the
"www.mobileread.com/forums/showthread.php?t=349634" URL text, and go back to the terminal and paste into the wget command.
It sounds like alot, but much easier if you use KOReader gestures to call up terminal in a single swipe, and the up and down arrows to call up command history in terminal. And it may not work on all sites.
*I don't actually do this since I have elinks browser. Just having a little fun with the Kobo


*EDIT:Looks like an alternative graphical browser is also available (with some setup effort involved) via chroot. Extra Clara HD config steps on post #46.[/QUOTE]


**EDIT- You don't even need a browser on KOReader to transfer files from your phone.
Just run SSH server on KOReader and transfer by SFTP from Ghost Commander+SFTP Plugin.
On android, you can use SFTP-capable Ghost Commander, but I had to use an older version to get an SFTP plugin combination that worked on my older phone:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/gho...er%20versions/

The two apk files that worked for me were:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/gho...3.apk/download
and:
https://sourceforge.net/projects/gho...1.apk/download


****

If you want to download web pages from android as epub files you can use:
https://f-droid.org/en/packages/info...aukao.einkbro/

If you want to download web pages from android as pdf files you can share to:
https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org....efarmer.print/

To web serve these to your kobo browser:
https://f-droid.org/en/packages/net.basov.lws.fdroid/
https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org....s.filemanager/

Yet another option is using the web browser on my phone to copy the html address of the target, then paste this into a ConnectBot (from F-Droid) SSH connection to the Kobo to "wget <address>".
Reliable and easy!
* Edit - if you are using ConnectBot on Android, I think the 1.9.6-oss version and earlier doesn't have the scrolling issue that the later version does.


***

UPDATE - GUI FTP CLIENT IN KOREADER:

The Cloud Storage menu item from the tools menu in Koreader would let us get files from an ftp server on our phone.

Click the + and add an ftp account for your phone server, e.g.:
Myaccount
ftp://192.168.43.147:12345
Myuser
Mypassword
(blank for folder)

Install the primitive ftpd server on your phone.
https://f-droid.org/en/packages/org.primftpd/
Note: For an older phone I had to install an earlier version, 6.15 (code 61), in order for Preferences to work.

Set storage type to plain old filesystem.
In Preferences, set Username, Password, and Server Start Directory (First directory after login), which would be the same directory you gave access to when you set the storage type.

Now from KOReader Cloud Storage you get download access via Myaccount (obviously with the address set to the one given by primitive ftpd.)

*For more advanced ftp command-line app, see lftp in NiLuJe's kobostuff mentioned in post #2.

***

[ryanwwest]

@elinkser Do you know if the HTML files can be viewed within KOReader in a format looking more like the original file (as viewed in Google Chrome or another typical browser)? It looks like most HTML files are quite readable from my experience, but they seem to lose things like side bars and other CSS formatting when viewed in KOReader do to the way it reflows the files (similar to how KOReader can display PDFs in the original form or turn on reflow to just get the main content).

[elinkser]

Can you give an example web page?

Is EinkBro able to convert it to an acceptable epub format?

I see there may be some barrier to getting it to display on KOReader, but I'll leave that to someone more qualified to answer.


https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...d.php?t=335787

[ryanwwest]

Sure, an example is https://www.zylstra.org/blog/2022/09...n-hypothes-is/. I used the SingleFile chrome extension to generate a single .html file for this, and when viewing that local .html file in Chrome, it displays in the same way as natively (i.e. all of the header contents and sidebar render properly, see first screenshot). When viewing this same .html file in KOReader, I think everything still shows up and the content is easily readable, but you lose the look and feel of the header and sidebar and comments. I'm curious if there is or could be a way to view this file in a non 'Reflow' mode as well, similar to how KOReader lets you read PDFs with Reflow off (natively) or Reflow on (epub-like). I'm guessing this is not possible, though.

https://github-production-user-asset...f052f35893.png

https://github-production-user-asset...eecad7a74c.png

[elinkser]

We see that pdf renders everything the same whether on a big or small display, except the text and images will be tiny on a small display.

My understanding is the so-called "reflow" by the K2pdfopt library in KOReader internally replaces the original document with a different document in which the lines of text are detected as units and are chopped up and layed out in a new temporary document. But if it encounters a text frame with a box around it, it will treat it like a unit and just resize the whole thing.

In html, the same document is used whether the display is large or small. Each character is treated as a unit and is truly reflowed so that less characters are displayed per line the smaller the display.


Getting back to your example web page, if I open it up in LibreOffice, the side elements on the right (tech pledge and Creative Commons notice) are identified as follows:

<!--[if lt IE 9]>
<script type='text/javascript' src='https://www.zylstra.org/wp/wp-content/themes/sempress/js/html5shiv.min.js?ver=3.7.3' id='html5-js'></script>
<![endif]-->

TML: <meta name="viewport" content="user-scalable=no, width=device-width">

According to the mobilereader forum I linked to above, KOReader may not be able to handle certain styles that a web engine would:

Originally Posted by pazos

Anyway, KOReader uses Coolreader engine and that doesn't fullfit the "full CSS support" needed by OP.

Probably it (the coolreader engine) is the best epub render that doesn't rely on a web engine, but that's another history.

So if I save the web page as a complete web page from desktop Firefox, both Firefox and Chromium on my desktop can reopen the file+folder and render it in the original style.


But if I shrink the window to the size of my Kobo display, the side elements get pushed to the bottom of the page, just as they are in KOReader, the Nickel web browser, EinkBro on android,etc...


So at least for this example, it seems you would need an ereader with a big display, probably running Firefox in desktop mode to get that desktop experience.


Maybe you have other examples where this wouldn't be the case.

I'm actually pretty okay with the imperfect, but still fairly intact rendering by KOReader. Maybe someone can come up with another idea?

[elinkser]

I have now been able to view your web page in desktop format by using desktop Firefox to download the complete web page, copy the folder to /mnt/onboard/shared, and open the webpage at address file:///shared/, using the webkit-based browser luakit, running in a chroot.

I had been experiencing a performance breakthrough in online use from using adblock and noscript (previously it had been excruciating - now it is as "snappy" as the nickel browser if not more so.)

The chroot requires considerable effort to install, though step-by-step instructions are provided. However, once installed, it runs off of a nickelmenu entry like KOReader, although admittedly it is not IN KOReader, and to exit you have to type "sync" and "poweroff" from the terminal. YMMV , no warranty is implied!

https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...4&postcount=53
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...5&postcount=54

It will even handle server-events:
https://www.javatpoint.com/html-server-sent-event


Update:
You can also run Opera Mini browser (save data charges) in the chroot.
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sh...7&postcount=56

[noobyme]

Better solution for noobs is to ssh into a computer with links on it

[elinkser]

That's an option, but don't forget about security implications of accessing a secure device (i.e. one you use for banking/email) from an insecure device (kobo).