Wish list for first firmware update

[the hatter]

WISH: Use more of the available screen space! There is always double spacing between lines (and no option to change this), and there is a large empty margin between the words and the edge of the screen. I don't feel like the little line telling me what chapter I'm on or what book i'm reeding needs to take up > 0.5" of vertical space. Together, the header and footer take up greater than 1" of the < 5" of vertical space available. Also, there is more than 1/4" of space on the left and right hand sides, and I think that 1/8" or 1/16" of space would be fine.

One of the reasons I wanted a Kobo over say the comparably priced Sony PRS-300 was because of the larger screen, but considering the poor use of space, i think I could actually get more text on a page using the sony, which doesn't have all this extra outside space or double spacing. At the bare minimum, please include an option to reduce spacing between the lines to 1x or 1.5x. That way at least people can have a choice about this stuff.

[corona]

Originally Posted by the hatter

WISH: Use more of the available screen space!

Gosh, this is a really good point!

[artificial]

Originally Posted by the hatter

WISH: Use more of the available screen space! There is always double spacing between lines (and no option to change this)

The formatting of an ePub is dependant on the stylesheet its author applied when the ePub was created. If you strip the CSS stylesheet from the ePub, or better yet edit it to suit your taste, books can be formatted how you like them. There are various threads about how to do this on the forum.

I agree it would be a nice feature to be able to override certain CSS styles from a menu in the Kobo Reader (text-align, line-height, paragraph top/bottom margin and text-indent), but I'm not holding my breath. One option I think would be easy for them to implement would be for the kobo Reader to ignore CSS styles altogether.

[corona]

But I don't think this explains the "footer," does it? I.e. where the title and current page of the book are given. Also, there just seems to be about 3/16" on the left and right where text never appears, no matter what. And I see this in books even when I've completely deleted the stylesheet file.

[artificial]

Not sure who's seen this already, but here is a statment by a Kobo rep from their Facebook discussion area:

Kobo Quick note - the update should also take care of the font sizing issue, if anyone has been having trouble with that!

This is in addition to an earlier statement that many battery issues will be resolved in the firmware update:

Kobo Hey folks,

We've just been informed that the fixes being addressed are the battery indicator light, as well as fixing (or rather, extending) the battery life.

Clearly Kobo are listening to our requests, and it looks as if many of the top issues will be fixed in the firmware update.

[artificial]

Originally Posted by corona

But I don't think this explains the "footer," does it? I.e. where the title and current page of the book are given. Also, there just seems to be about 3/16" on the left and right where text never appears, no matter what. And I see this in books even when I've completely deleted the stylesheet file.

I don't know of a way to remove the footer, where the page count is displayed. Personally I really like seeing the page number, as I am a chronic page counter! But I can understand why you might want it removed.

The header on the other hand I think is an unnecessary waste of screen real estate, but thankfully it doesn't seem to display on ePubs except those that come with the Kobo. It may appear on books purchased from the Kobo store, I'm not sure? I actually tried figuring out how to control the header in an ePub, since it doesn't seem to be part of the ePub specification, I think it's a proprietary Adobe addition to the spec. In any case I couldn't figure it out.

With the margins, I wouldn't want to [I]completely[/I ]remove the margins, in the same way that I wouldn't want to read a paperback book where the printing extended to the very edges of the page. The default margin seems perfect to me. But courses for horses I guess!

[artificial]

I'm not sure if this has been added to the wishlist already:

Wish: Delete cover art from the Kobo Reader's cache when the book is deleted from the device.

For background info see:
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...79&postcount=7
https://www.mobileread.com/forums/sho...34&postcount=9

[roguefan99]

Oh one thing I was thinking of was ability to access the "Overview" of a book without actually having to open it up. Reason why is I like to have a "bare" I'm reading list and I was going though the books and wondering what I should read next and was interested in a couple that I would have liked to check out the overview first.

[HamsterRage]

Originally Posted by Bismar

I'm sorry but you have to be fu&king kidding me, so what exactly is going to be in the upcoming firmware....., they've basically said we'll think about it go away, for the majority of the questions.

I don't see how it can take them 3-6 months to do points 2, 4 and 10.

Hell i don't even see the point of this thread any longer.......

Clearly, you've never been involved in software development.

For anything as fundamental as the firmware in an eReader, there's no such thing as a quick fix. Even nailing down the core assumptions is often tough - just look at the list of assumptions that they made for initial release that people are calling deal breakers - like the double-spaced lines in all the Kobo store ePubs.

So you can't even just assume that the solution is obvious to any particular issue. You have to spend time to think it through and understand all of the ramifications of any change you make.

Testing is another thing that becomes critical. I can't even count the number of times when a programmer around here has made what was literally a 5 minute change to code that then required hours or even days of testing before it could be released to the live environment. Let alone count the number of times some idiot programmer thought that a change was too trivial to bother testing - resulting in hours or days of data repair when the inevitable problem was found.

On top of that, they won't want to be releasing versions too often, because that always causes issues with the user base. The minute you have two releases out in the wild, you have two user communities. At the third release you have three user communities and so on and so on. And that's assuming that everything goes well, and a fix for one problem doesn't break some other feature so that some quantity of people refuse to go to a certain release, and so on...

And you'll see it here. Someone will post a problem on the forum, and the very next post will be, "What release are you on?". Over and over. So the fewer releases, the better in the long run, in my opinion at least.

And there has to be prioritization of tasks, since qualified programming/testing/analyst resources are almost always limited. Which means that some really good ideas have to wait, simply because more important issues need to get looked at first. Which doesn't mean having people toss tons of ideas for fixes, changes and enhancements isn't worthwhile, welcome and useful - just that not every idea is going to translate into instant gratification for someone.

[PeterT]

You also forgot to mention the complexity with multiple releases of upgrades. Assuming versions A B and C; if a database change is made in version B, does the C upgrade also require the steps embedded in it to perform the database change, or does one force the installation of version B as a requirement for version C's installaion?

The more versions you create, the more complex the packaging and installation procedures can become.

[HamsterRage]

There's also the idea that you have to do the changes right. Just because the perceived outcome of a change is small doesn't mean that the best way to do it is with a small software change. Sometimes you do need to go back and refactor when the assumptions under which something was originally coded turn out to be incorrect.

Hanging a band-aid on top of code which is fundamentally wrong just makes it harder to fix in the future. Just ask Microsoft.

[corona]

I wonder what's going on with the beta? If the full release is a week away, that's not much time for beta-goodness, IMO.

[thepossum]

I would like an option for "messy" screen updates -- Maybe you've noticed that when you first turn on the Kobo device, a bit of an after-image remains on the screen. This is because the when the eInk redraws the screen, not all of the little "pixels" get rotated into the absolutely perfect orientation. So the quick "fix" is to flash the whole screen black and then redraw.

I'd like an option to skip the black screenwipe, and just draw the new screen. It'll make the Kobo seem much more responsive on the occasions when I need to do simple tasks like skim quickly through a book looking for a passage.

[milhouse]

If the insanely slow boot times don't improve with the new firmware, I think its time to return my Kobo and pick up a nook - now for the same price but with better features.

[HamsterRage]

Originally Posted by milhouse

If the insanely slow boot times don't improve with the new firmware, I think its time to return my Kobo and pick up a nook - now for the same price but with better features.

I've pretty much stopped turning mine off. I haven't noticed any difference in battery life, and I've yet to see any evidence of one of the buttons being pushed down for hours on end and doing whatever while it's been in my briefcase.

The only reason I've turned mine off in the past few weeks is to get the battery gauge to update.