7 ms·

eInk Mode: Making web pages easier to read

163 points by amadeuspagel 2y ago

deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
egypturnash 2y ago
Honestly now I want "paged mode" as an option in my browsers next to "reader mode". Or a thing I can choose for reader mode to involve. Flipping pages on my desktop with l/r arrow keys (which is what this 'eink mode' does if you invoke it on a desktop) instead of endlessly scrolling is pretty nice.
- carlosjobim 2y ago
  You can -almost- do this on most browsers by pressing space bar to scroll down and shift+space bar to scroll up. But on phones there is no remedy yet. For e-ink the problem with space bar scrolling is that it has an animation which messes up the display. Historically we went from scrolls to pages when the printing press was developed. Digital reading needs to go through the same evolution, it seems.
  - egypturnash 2y ago
    "Almost" is doing a lot of work in this sentence. Lines of text end up halfway off the screen. Sticky headers obscure text and you have to scroll backwards. It's just a messy experience.
    - carlosjobim 2y ago
      If you use reader mode, then you won't have those problems. Bonus: J/K keys will scroll to next paragraph or HTML element.
  - stuaxo 2y ago
    Not sure if it's still there, but when the scrolling was introduced there was a setting to enable or disable it so the old jump mode would work too.
  - edent 2y ago
    On Android you can pair a Bluetooth presentation remote. Up and Down work as Page Up / Down. I use that for reading on my phone and eReader.
    - darkteflon 2y ago
      I do this too, on an iPhone and iPad. I keep several remotes scattered around the house and in the car, and have strategically placed either cellotape-backed Magsafe mounts (on things like the car sun visor) or suspension arms (desks, bed). Sounds overkill, I know - my wife hates it - but if you do a lot of reading on your phone/iPad, your hands will thank you. I have an eReader too (jailbroken Kindle) which I really like, in principle, but between PDF text sizing and reflow issues, it’s often just way easier to break out the iPad in reader mode with one of these remotes.
- mdp2021 2y ago
  If you don't mind the terminal, `lynx` (for example) could do the trick.
- jnsie 2y ago
  It's a funny old world. Last weekend I jailbroke my Kindle for various reasons but among them to get continuous scrolling. I never imagined people would want anything else on the desktop. Different strokes for different folks, of course...
bityard 2y ago
Okay, so I started reading this and got excited to see what this was all about. I've been wanting a web browser that can turn the "regular web" (as much as possible) into something more like an e-book that happens to have hyperlinks. Essentially, imagine Reader Mode, but all the time. But this is... something else? I tried scrolling to the bottom and as soon as I click on the scroll bar, I get a pop-up showing a bunch of gestures and can no longer scroll. Pressing the back button does nothing. Closing the tab asks me if I want to discard my unsaved changes?! So I'm guessing this is some CSS/JS to make a regular site _behave_ something like an e-reader? Which may be fine as far as it goes, I just don't think it's a good idea to hijack the scroll
- bestouff 2y ago
  Actually it's not a bad idea. Scrolling is impossible on epaper screens.
- evantbyrne 2y ago
  This is something I've been wanting for a while. You could probably build an extension to accomplish that. One hard challenge would be extracting content and then displaying it in a way that retains its semantics across the web, including navigation, sidebars, etc. Another would be form handling.
  - carlosjobim 2y ago
    How about an extension that does it -after- the browser has implemented reader view? Then all that is already taken care of.
    - evantbyrne 2y ago
      As far as I can tell, none of the built-in reader modes seem to handle basic things like global navigation or pages that aren't laid out as articles. Even worse, many pages that appear to be articles to the eye won't render in reader modes. There's a lot of work to be done yet.
  - jack101311 2y ago
mattl 2y ago
Really like this. In Safari on iOS this works great. If this combined dark mode and reader mode font sizes I’d call my favorite way to read the mobile web.
- jack101311 2y ago
  I'm glad to hear that. Thank you.
chambers 2y ago
In lieu of an e-ink monitor, I use a hotkey to toggle "Grayscale" filtering on my Mac. It's taking some of the addictiveness out of my screen viewing.
- mcbuilder 2y ago
  On the trip to my local recycling center I immediately did a double take when I saw a pair of Eizo GX540 monochrome medical diagnostic displays sitting there. I've got these babies hooked up and I can see myself using this e-ink mode and the grayscale nature of these monitors. Although these monitors weren't intended for productivity they are very good at editing B&W photography, terminal work, and even old films.
- ikurei 2y ago
  I use this setting often, together with Increase Contrast, through the Accessibility Shortcuts menu. For whatever reason, my computer feels more peaceful and calm with those on, even if it's worse and uglier too. How did you assign it to a hotkey? I'm sure there's at least a dozen ways to do it, but I couldn't find a simple one without installing additional software.
  - chambers 2y ago
    I use the "Shortcut" section in Accessibility Settings. I uncheck everything except for "Color Filtering". I then map the default hotkey to a more convenient key using BetterTouchTool. BetterTouchTool is additional software for customizing input devices; I've used it for a decade and I consider it essential. Sadly, adding "Increase Contrast" to the shortcut causes the hotkey press to generate a voiced popup instead of quietly and directly toggling.
    - StevenNunez 2y ago
      Brilliant. I just added a button the StreamDeck using this. Thanks!
- qingcharles 2y ago
  I have this setting on my Android phone at night to make it awful to use.
MPSFounder 2y ago
Side note: is there any eink monitor someone recommends? I have a macbook pro, a macbook air and a remarkable pro. The Remarkable pro (has colors) flickers way too much. My macbook pro also uses miniled which dries my eyes. It is using PWM I figured (work laptop, so I used it docked). I want an eink monitor with no flickers, that is easy on the eyes. The macbook air screen is great compared to the macbook pro (does not use PWM). I thought I don't need color on the eink monitor, but syntax highlighting helps ... Maybe I am just getting old ha, but I sit in front of monitors for 10-12 hours a day
- tarasglek 2y ago
  I got a lenovo thinkbook eink. It is pretty nice hw with awful sw. With some hacks i found on reddit its good enough
carlosjobim 2y ago
This is something genius from the article: "WYSIWYG Printing (PDF Saving) When printing web pages, browsers typically use a default pagination algorithm that rearranges the content based on the printed paper size. This ensures images aren't cut off by page boundaries. However, this pagination isn't tailored to the user's current device screen size. Instead, it uses standard paper dimensions like A4, A3, or B5. As a result, when downloading a PDF on a small-screen device using A4 sizing, the text may appear too small to read comfortably in a PDF reader, requiring zooming. This leads to the same issues as general web page zooming: inability to view full lines of text and the need for constant horizontal scrolling. In Eink mode, pressing the print button will produce a PDF that mirrors the screen's display. While the paper size might be larger, resulting in surrounding whitespace, using an E Ink device's native PDF reader (such as Onyx's Neoreader) to automatically crop the margins will create a PDF that exactly matches the on-screen view. All highlighted annotations and handwritten notes will be preserved in their original page positions, achieving a true 'What You See Is What You Get' experience. This allows users to conveniently save and later review content on the same device without text size issues."
- jack101311 2y ago
  Thank you for your appreciation.
deleted 2y ago
[deleted]
OptCohTomo 2y ago
https://opg.optica.org/oe/fulltext.cfm?uri=oe-33-3-6017&id=567812 https://opg.optica.org/oe/fulltext.cfm?uri=oe-33-3-6017&id=5... A little off topic, but Figures 12 and 13 show optical coherence tomography images of Kindle Paperwhite display layers. The E-Ink, touch screen electrodes, and lightguide layers are shown.
groby_b 2y ago
This, the same as dark mode, and media queries etc, all completely undermines the core idea of the web - a semantic representation of data, rendered by a user agent, according to the users preferences. CSS & JS are the opposite. Yes, I realize it's a losing battle, but it's a depressing thing nonetheless.
- dflock 2y ago
  Dark Mode, and media queries are both just options/hints - they are implemented on the client side - by the user agent. The actual problem is that most browsers have forgotten that they're "user agents" - and have stipped away all the configurations and options that they used to have, removing control from the user. Vivaldi is still very configurable, and still behaves like the users agent.
  - ArinaS 2y ago
    > "have stipped away all the configurations and options that they used to have" Mozilla with their deprecation of XUL was like that.
qingcharles 2y ago
This sounds like it needs to be a new media query in CSS. It could overlap heavily with the print media query.
gdonelli 2y ago
Love this idea! I have been working on a way to turn your phone into a better reader device with https://astropad.com/bookcase https://astropad.com/bookcase
das_keyboard 2y ago
The article contains a paragraph about ads and it reads like a nightmare: > The full-page advertisement you saw on the previous page is an example. > the paginated website design opens up new possibilities for ad placement and presentation, allowing for innovative approaches in terms of ad type, location, size, and interaction compared to traditional scrolling. > highlighted and annotated sections often represent the user's key interests, allowing for more targeted and relevant ad placements > ads embedded in the website will be included in these downloaded PDFs, increasing ad exposure each time the user reviews the PDF file. > Paid subscribers could download ad-free PDFs, while non-paying users receive PDFs with embedded advertisements, providing a tiered reading experience.
- rchaud 2y ago
  This describes how ads are displayed in paper magazines. Sounds fine to me, I prefer static ads in predictable spots that don't cause page jumps the way "dynamic ads" do on web.
- carlosjobim 2y ago
  Why a nightmare? This is much more reasonable than the current model. It's just like print media ads.
keheliya 2y ago
I wish this was supported by default in the Kindle browser. I wonder if there was a way to make it an extension or a wrapper and make it available in eink device browsers. But it seems that even this blog post page is not supported in the Kindle browser. (I don't see the eink mode icon.) The requirements for me are simple, primarily to make consuming web content on my kindle scribe easier. * Instead of scrolling by finger gestures (which is a pain to watch on slowly-refreshing eink), have two buttons on the side to do page up and down. * Disable animations * Ability to increase/decrease font size. I attempted to make this happen for my mastodon feed [here](https://keheliya-slowdon.web.val.run/ https://keheliya-slowdon.web.val.run/). source available [here](https://www.val.town/v/keheliya/slowdon https://www.val.town/v/keheliya/slowdon). Then there's [Kindly RSS reader](https://github.com/nicoan/kindly-rss-reader https://github.com/nicoan/kindly-rss-reader) The goal is to be able to access all the text content that I consume regularly without much pain on a kindle.
- jack101311 2y ago
  I think Kindle's experimental browser does not support javaScript so that's the reason why there's no eink icon. I do hope I can use Eink mode on my Kindle too.
  - keheliya 1y ago
    It has limited JavaScript support according to this: https://imgur.com/a/Ig8MyyH https://imgur.com/a/Ig8MyyH Should be enough to implement the claimed features at least.
- carlosjobim 2y ago
  Maybe this could be implemented on a jailbroken Kindle?
  - keheliya 1y ago
    Yes! Maybe even a koreader extension with these features will be nice!
jack101311 2y ago
Hi everyone, I'm the author of this article. I was informed that my article has been shared here. I'm really glad to see the feedback and comments from so many people. I understand that this project is not perfect and has many areas that need improvement, as it's still in its early stages of development. I will do my best to make it as good as possible. Thank you all for your support !
- dredmorbius 2y ago
  Jack: I just wanted to say that this is awesome, that you're echoing a lot of my own thoughts, and that I'm dying to see this as a browser extension or something integrated into Einkbro directly (I've been a fan of that for years now myself). I wrote a set of design principles for e-ink displays back in 2022. You especially address #6, of course: 1. Persistence is free 2. Paints are expensive 3. Refreshes are slow 4. Colours are very limited or nonexistent 5. Line art displays beautifully. Raster images not so much 6. Pagination navigation is strongly preferred to scroll 7. Graphics are reflective rather than emissive 8. Touch / Wacom may exist 9. Feature detection capabilities are limited <https://diaspora.glasswings.com/posts/638a8d10e041013afba8448a5b29e257 https://diaspora.glasswings.com/posts/638a8d10e041013afba844...> On power consumption: informally comparing battery usage under a web browser (Einkbro) and an ebook reader (NeoReader) on my Onyx BOOX Max Lumi, browser draw is about 10x that of the ebook reader.. It's much more efficient to have fixed layout and limited screen paints. I've been toying with a vaguely-related project of generating a newspaper-like presentation of news site(s), described and imaged here: <https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius/114356066459105122 https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius/114356066459105122>. The main commonality is in creating a calmed interface though it's principally a standalone generator rather than an in-browser JS application. I'd like to try integrating eInk Mode to that page to see how they work together. (I have some concerns given my use of grid + column layouts, but want to give it a shot.)
  - jack101311 2y ago
    Wow, I'm really glad someone can echo my thoughts too. Actually, back in 2021, I proposed building a software ecosystem for E Ink displays. The article is right here: [https://jackscogito.blogspot.com/2022/05/the-necessity-of-establishing-e-ink.html https://jackscogito.blogspot.com/2022/05/the-necessity-of-es...] (This article was rewritten in English in 2022.) And some of your design principles resonate with mine, but yours are more concise and clearly highlight the characteristics of E Ink displays. Also, your newspaper demo looks fantastic. I think it would be perfect for viewing on a 25.1-inch E Ink display in portrait mode; the effect must be excellent. However, I'm concerned you might encounter difficulties applying Eink Mode to it, as I'm currently grappling with the pagination algorithms for Table, grid, and flex layouts, which are proving quite challenging.

163 points by amadeuspagel 2y ago

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

Honestly now I want "paged mode" as an option in my browsers next to "reader mode". Or a thing I can choose for reader mode to involve. Flipping pages on my desktop with l/r arrow keys (which is what this 'eink mode' does if you invoke it on a desktop) instead of endlessly scrolling is pretty nice.

carlosjobim 2y ago
You can -almost- do this on most browsers by pressing space bar to scroll down and shift+space bar to scroll up. But on phones there is no remedy yet. For e-ink the problem with space bar scrolling is that it has an animation which messes up the display. Historically we went from scrolls to pages when the printing press was developed. Digital reading needs to go through the same evolution, it seems.
- egypturnash 2y ago
  "Almost" is doing a lot of work in this sentence. Lines of text end up halfway off the screen. Sticky headers obscure text and you have to scroll backwards. It's just a messy experience.
  - carlosjobim 2y ago
    If you use reader mode, then you won't have those problems. Bonus: J/K keys will scroll to next paragraph or HTML element.
- stuaxo 2y ago
  Not sure if it's still there, but when the scrolling was introduced there was a setting to enable or disable it so the old jump mode would work too.
- edent 2y ago
  On Android you can pair a Bluetooth presentation remote. Up and Down work as Page Up / Down. I use that for reading on my phone and eReader.
  - darkteflon 2y ago
    I do this too, on an iPhone and iPad. I keep several remotes scattered around the house and in the car, and have strategically placed either cellotape-backed Magsafe mounts (on things like the car sun visor) or suspension arms (desks, bed). Sounds overkill, I know - my wife hates it - but if you do a lot of reading on your phone/iPad, your hands will thank you. I have an eReader too (jailbroken Kindle) which I really like, in principle, but between PDF text sizing and reflow issues, it’s often just way easier to break out the iPad in reader mode with one of these remotes.
mdp2021 2y ago
If you don't mind the terminal, `lynx` (for example) could do the trick.
jnsie 2y ago
It's a funny old world. Last weekend I jailbroke my Kindle for various reasons but among them to get continuous scrolling. I never imagined people would want anything else on the desktop. Different strokes for different folks, of course...

bityard 2y ago

Okay, so I started reading this and got excited to see what this was all about. I've been wanting a web browser that can turn the "regular web" (as much as possible) into something more like an e-book that happens to have hyperlinks. Essentially, imagine Reader Mode, but all the time. But this is... something else? I tried scrolling to the bottom and as soon as I click on the scroll bar, I get a pop-up showing a bunch of gestures and can no longer scroll. Pressing the back button does nothing. Closing the tab asks me if I want to discard my unsaved changes?! So I'm guessing this is some CSS/JS to make a regular site _behave_ something like an e-reader? Which may be fine as far as it goes, I just don't think it's a good idea to hijack the scroll

bestouff 2y ago
Actually it's not a bad idea. Scrolling is impossible on epaper screens.
evantbyrne 2y ago
This is something I've been wanting for a while. You could probably build an extension to accomplish that. One hard challenge would be extracting content and then displaying it in a way that retains its semantics across the web, including navigation, sidebars, etc. Another would be form handling.
- carlosjobim 2y ago
  How about an extension that does it -after- the browser has implemented reader view? Then all that is already taken care of.
  - evantbyrne 2y ago
    As far as I can tell, none of the built-in reader modes seem to handle basic things like global navigation or pages that aren't laid out as articles. Even worse, many pages that appear to be articles to the eye won't render in reader modes. There's a lot of work to be done yet.
- jack101311 2y ago

mattl 2y ago

Really like this. In Safari on iOS this works great. If this combined dark mode and reader mode font sizes I’d call my favorite way to read the mobile web.

jack101311 2y ago
I'm glad to hear that. Thank you.

chambers 2y ago

In lieu of an e-ink monitor, I use a hotkey to toggle "Grayscale" filtering on my Mac. It's taking some of the addictiveness out of my screen viewing.

mcbuilder 2y ago
On the trip to my local recycling center I immediately did a double take when I saw a pair of Eizo GX540 monochrome medical diagnostic displays sitting there. I've got these babies hooked up and I can see myself using this e-ink mode and the grayscale nature of these monitors. Although these monitors weren't intended for productivity they are very good at editing B&W photography, terminal work, and even old films.
ikurei 2y ago
I use this setting often, together with Increase Contrast, through the Accessibility Shortcuts menu. For whatever reason, my computer feels more peaceful and calm with those on, even if it's worse and uglier too. How did you assign it to a hotkey? I'm sure there's at least a dozen ways to do it, but I couldn't find a simple one without installing additional software.
- chambers 2y ago
  I use the "Shortcut" section in Accessibility Settings. I uncheck everything except for "Color Filtering". I then map the default hotkey to a more convenient key using BetterTouchTool. BetterTouchTool is additional software for customizing input devices; I've used it for a decade and I consider it essential. Sadly, adding "Increase Contrast" to the shortcut causes the hotkey press to generate a voiced popup instead of quietly and directly toggling.
  - StevenNunez 2y ago
    Brilliant. I just added a button the StreamDeck using this. Thanks!
qingcharles 2y ago
I have this setting on my Android phone at night to make it awful to use.

MPSFounder 2y ago

Side note: is there any eink monitor someone recommends? I have a macbook pro, a macbook air and a remarkable pro. The Remarkable pro (has colors) flickers way too much. My macbook pro also uses miniled which dries my eyes. It is using PWM I figured (work laptop, so I used it docked). I want an eink monitor with no flickers, that is easy on the eyes. The macbook air screen is great compared to the macbook pro (does not use PWM). I thought I don't need color on the eink monitor, but syntax highlighting helps ... Maybe I am just getting old ha, but I sit in front of monitors for 10-12 hours a day

tarasglek 2y ago
I got a lenovo thinkbook eink. It is pretty nice hw with awful sw. With some hacks i found on reddit its good enough

carlosjobim 2y ago

This is something genius from the article: "WYSIWYG Printing (PDF Saving) When printing web pages, browsers typically use a default pagination algorithm that rearranges the content based on the printed paper size. This ensures images aren't cut off by page boundaries. However, this pagination isn't tailored to the user's current device screen size. Instead, it uses standard paper dimensions like A4, A3, or B5. As a result, when downloading a PDF on a small-screen device using A4 sizing, the text may appear too small to read comfortably in a PDF reader, requiring zooming. This leads to the same issues as general web page zooming: inability to view full lines of text and the need for constant horizontal scrolling. In Eink mode, pressing the print button will produce a PDF that mirrors the screen's display. While the paper size might be larger, resulting in surrounding whitespace, using an E Ink device's native PDF reader (such as Onyx's Neoreader) to automatically crop the margins will create a PDF that exactly matches the on-screen view. All highlighted annotations and handwritten notes will be preserved in their original page positions, achieving a true 'What You See Is What You Get' experience. This allows users to conveniently save and later review content on the same device without text size issues."

jack101311 2y ago
Thank you for your appreciation.

deleted 2y ago

[deleted]

OptCohTomo 2y ago

https://opg.optica.org/oe/fulltext.cfm?uri=oe-33-3-6017&id=567812 https://opg.optica.org/oe/fulltext.cfm?uri=oe-33-3-6017&id=5... A little off topic, but Figures 12 and 13 show optical coherence tomography images of Kindle Paperwhite display layers. The E-Ink, touch screen electrodes, and lightguide layers are shown.

groby_b 2y ago

This, the same as dark mode, and media queries etc, all completely undermines the core idea of the web - a semantic representation of data, rendered by a user agent, according to the users preferences. CSS & JS are the opposite. Yes, I realize it's a losing battle, but it's a depressing thing nonetheless.

dflock 2y ago
Dark Mode, and media queries are both just options/hints - they are implemented on the client side - by the user agent. The actual problem is that most browsers have forgotten that they're "user agents" - and have stipped away all the configurations and options that they used to have, removing control from the user. Vivaldi is still very configurable, and still behaves like the users agent.
- ArinaS 2y ago
  > "have stipped away all the configurations and options that they used to have" Mozilla with their deprecation of XUL was like that.

qingcharles 2y ago

This sounds like it needs to be a new media query in CSS. It could overlap heavily with the print media query.

gdonelli 2y ago

Love this idea! I have been working on a way to turn your phone into a better reader device with https://astropad.com/bookcase https://astropad.com/bookcase

das_keyboard 2y ago

The article contains a paragraph about ads and it reads like a nightmare: > The full-page advertisement you saw on the previous page is an example. > the paginated website design opens up new possibilities for ad placement and presentation, allowing for innovative approaches in terms of ad type, location, size, and interaction compared to traditional scrolling. > highlighted and annotated sections often represent the user's key interests, allowing for more targeted and relevant ad placements > ads embedded in the website will be included in these downloaded PDFs, increasing ad exposure each time the user reviews the PDF file. > Paid subscribers could download ad-free PDFs, while non-paying users receive PDFs with embedded advertisements, providing a tiered reading experience.

rchaud 2y ago
This describes how ads are displayed in paper magazines. Sounds fine to me, I prefer static ads in predictable spots that don't cause page jumps the way "dynamic ads" do on web.
carlosjobim 2y ago
Why a nightmare? This is much more reasonable than the current model. It's just like print media ads.

keheliya 2y ago

I wish this was supported by default in the Kindle browser. I wonder if there was a way to make it an extension or a wrapper and make it available in eink device browsers. But it seems that even this blog post page is not supported in the Kindle browser. (I don't see the eink mode icon.) The requirements for me are simple, primarily to make consuming web content on my kindle scribe easier. * Instead of scrolling by finger gestures (which is a pain to watch on slowly-refreshing eink), have two buttons on the side to do page up and down. * Disable animations * Ability to increase/decrease font size. I attempted to make this happen for my mastodon feed [here](https://keheliya-slowdon.web.val.run/ https://keheliya-slowdon.web.val.run/). source available [here](https://www.val.town/v/keheliya/slowdon https://www.val.town/v/keheliya/slowdon). Then there's [Kindly RSS reader](https://github.com/nicoan/kindly-rss-reader https://github.com/nicoan/kindly-rss-reader) The goal is to be able to access all the text content that I consume regularly without much pain on a kindle.

jack101311 2y ago
I think Kindle's experimental browser does not support javaScript so that's the reason why there's no eink icon. I do hope I can use Eink mode on my Kindle too.
- keheliya 1y ago
  It has limited JavaScript support according to this: https://imgur.com/a/Ig8MyyH https://imgur.com/a/Ig8MyyH Should be enough to implement the claimed features at least.
carlosjobim 2y ago
Maybe this could be implemented on a jailbroken Kindle?
- keheliya 1y ago
  Yes! Maybe even a koreader extension with these features will be nice!

jack101311 2y ago

Hi everyone, I'm the author of this article. I was informed that my article has been shared here. I'm really glad to see the feedback and comments from so many people. I understand that this project is not perfect and has many areas that need improvement, as it's still in its early stages of development. I will do my best to make it as good as possible. Thank you all for your support !

dredmorbius 2y ago
Jack: I just wanted to say that this is awesome, that you're echoing a lot of my own thoughts, and that I'm dying to see this as a browser extension or something integrated into Einkbro directly (I've been a fan of that for years now myself). I wrote a set of design principles for e-ink displays back in 2022. You especially address #6, of course: 1. Persistence is free 2. Paints are expensive 3. Refreshes are slow 4. Colours are very limited or nonexistent 5. Line art displays beautifully. Raster images not so much 6. Pagination navigation is strongly preferred to scroll 7. Graphics are reflective rather than emissive 8. Touch / Wacom may exist 9. Feature detection capabilities are limited <https://diaspora.glasswings.com/posts/638a8d10e041013afba8448a5b29e257 https://diaspora.glasswings.com/posts/638a8d10e041013afba844...> On power consumption: informally comparing battery usage under a web browser (Einkbro) and an ebook reader (NeoReader) on my Onyx BOOX Max Lumi, browser draw is about 10x that of the ebook reader.. It's much more efficient to have fixed layout and limited screen paints. I've been toying with a vaguely-related project of generating a newspaper-like presentation of news site(s), described and imaged here: <https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius/114356066459105122 https://toot.cat/@dredmorbius/114356066459105122>. The main commonality is in creating a calmed interface though it's principally a standalone generator rather than an in-browser JS application. I'd like to try integrating eInk Mode to that page to see how they work together. (I have some concerns given my use of grid + column layouts, but want to give it a shot.)
- jack101311 2y ago
  Wow, I'm really glad someone can echo my thoughts too. Actually, back in 2021, I proposed building a software ecosystem for E Ink displays. The article is right here: [https://jackscogito.blogspot.com/2022/05/the-necessity-of-establishing-e-ink.html https://jackscogito.blogspot.com/2022/05/the-necessity-of-es...] (This article was rewritten in English in 2022.) And some of your design principles resonate with mine, but yours are more concise and clearly highlight the characteristics of E Ink displays. Also, your newspaper demo looks fantastic. I think it would be perfect for viewing on a 25.1-inch E Ink display in portrait mode; the effect must be excellent. However, I'm concerned you might encounter difficulties applying Eink Mode to it, as I'm currently grappling with the pagination algorithms for Table, grid, and flex layouts, which are proving quite challenging.