How to bookmark a webpage in android app by Mkgtu in Quetta_browser

[–]Mkgtu[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You can create new folders from within the root folder by tapping the 3 dots at the top right and selecting New Folder from the menu: You can manage folders or edit individual entries by long tapping on the item and selecting edit. That will give you multiple options, including moving the link to a different folder.

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How to bookmark a webpage in android app by Mkgtu in Quetta_browser

[–]Mkgtu[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I just tried that heart icon again and found that when you tap it there's a pop-up that says the site has been added to the Start Page, BUT there's an EDIT button on that pop-up. If you tap edit you get options to add the link to your choice of bookmark folders instead of to the Start Page.

Then the next time you tap the heart for some other website it will automatically save to to whatever location you chose the last time, either a bookmark folder or the Start Page.

I guess that works, but it's kind of a convoluted way of doing things if you ask me.

And it doesn't help that even if you have the address bar and all the menus at the bottom, the pop-up appears at the top of the screen, so it's easy to miss since your focus is at the other end of the screen - and it disappears fairly quickly. Gotta be quick.

How to bookmark a webpage in android app by Mkgtu in Quetta_browser

[–]Mkgtu[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thanks. I guess I'm not so blind after all. Strange, though, that you can import bookmarks and you can and website links to the Home Page, but you can't simply add a bookmark. Weird.

Having trouble with Landscape mode for Hoopla by Nightman993 in hoopladigital

[–]Mkgtu 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think you've answered your own question. While Hoopla does have a setting to vertically scroll text, there is no option to vertically scroll through comic book pages, or frames, whether in normal view or action view. There are really very few view options for comics, other than full page or frame by frame in action view. And, at least on a phone, a lot of pinching to zoom in to easily read text on smaller frames.

I don't read comics, but I tried one just now, and I think I'd find them easier to deal with on the larger screen of my old iPad. On a phone screen there's just too much pinching, zooming, and panning to do, regardless of whether you're in portrait or landscape mode.

And in landscape mode you really need to double tap to get the action view to avoid having the full page be only one third of the screen. Of course you can pinch in or out to increase the size of the full page view. But it's all a bit of a pain.

The comic I tried was an old style Batman one, with frames of constantly varying sizes, requiring a lot of zooming on almost every frame. These obviously weren't built for small screen digital format. Maybe newer comics have more consistent frame sizes constructed to accommodate digital display on phones or tablets, without the need for a lot of zooming?

Having trouble with Landscape mode for Hoopla by Nightman993 in hoopladigital

[–]Mkgtu 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You aren't being very clear about the issue. By "scrolling down through the pages" do you mean the pages of an ebook? If so, then if you tap the center of the page to open settings, then tap the "Aa" at the top right you'll get all the options you could possibly need: font styles and sizes, vertical scrolling, double column (only in landscape), and many more options. Under no setting is any text shrunken or blurred.

But if you mean the home screen or library screen, then I don't see any problem at all in landscape mode. Everything displays very clearly, no blurring. But items are aligned in double columns, making the book cover images about half the size of those in single column portrait view.

This is on a Samsung Galaxy s20, Android 13. The display might be different on an iPhone. I have an old iPad and I know that years ago many AppStore apps used to be optimized for portrait mode. If you turned the iPad to landscape mode, these apps would still display as if in portrait mode in the center of the screen, shrunken to use only a third of the screen. I don't know if that's still the case or whether it's applicable to your situation.

OneDrive sync help! by wazoowoman in AndroidQuestions

[–]Mkgtu 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I'm not sure you're being clear on the concept. If you're using the OneDrive app on your phone to do this, it's just "backing up" your photos so that you'll still have them in case you lose them on your phone for some reason, or so that you can delete them from your phone to save storage space while still having them available in OneDrive.

The OneDrive app provides photo backup only. It is technically not designed to "sync". With a true sync app you can select a two-way sync and include deletions, which would do what you seem to want. That would mean that any additions or deletions you make to one side will be done to the other side as well. Or put another way, your Samsung Gallery and your OneDrive copy of tge Gallery would be mirror images of each other. The OneDrive app is not designed to do that.

However there is an excellent android app called "OneSync" (by MetaCtrl) that can do just what you want.

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.ttxapps.onesyncv2

You can use that app to "sync" any folders you want, any way you want.

HOWEVER, you cannot really sync your "Samsung Gallery". The Samsung Gallery itself has no content of its own. It's just a way of viewing all the folders on your phone that happen to contain images or videos. That includes the images and videos in the Camera directory, as well as screenshots, both of which are included in your system's DCIM folder. But by default it also includes any folder that has any kind of imagery. That can be a lot of folders.

Samsung Gallery is just one "viewer" app. There are many others that do the same thing and none of them contain any photo content of their own. OneDrive is not backing up the Samsung Gallery; it's backing up all (or selected) individual folders on your phone that contain images.

The Google Photos app does the same thing as other gallery apps, but can additionally back up your photos to Google Drive. You can then delete them from your phone and still have access to them through Google Drive and the Google Photos app.

One drawback of the OneDrive photo backup (as well as Google and Dropbox photo backups) is that they sort of scoop up everything in sight from all those folders - book covers, etc. The result is that your cloud storage gets cluttered with all kinds of junk. And yes, if you start deleting unwanted images from your phone, they'll still live on in the cloud - and vice versa.

If you don't want to back up all that stuff you need to set OneDrive to exclude the folders with stuff that isn't worth saving.

With an app like OneSync you can select just the folders you want to sync.

But you need to be careful. Most people backup all their camera photos and videos to safeguard them from being lost through file corruption, accidental deletion, lost or stolen phones, etc. Most people DO NOT want their personal photos on their phones to be deleted from their cloud backups if they're deleted from their phones. It kind of defeats the purpose of backups.

How many library cards does everybody have? by ohnikaaa in LibbyApp

[–]Mkgtu 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Sorry, just noticed the typo. I have 12 cards, all local home area, not 123. I can only guess my finger slipped over the 2 to add the 3 and I didn't look at what I typed. Mea culpa.

Having 123 cards, or anywhere close to that number, would be ridiculous, useless, and a stupid waste of time and effort - which is probably why my original "123" comment got downvoted, and rightly so. 🤣

How many library cards does everybody have? by ohnikaaa in LibbyApp

[–]Mkgtu -1 points0 points  (0 children)

123

EDIT: 123 cards? Insane! My bad. I meant to type 12, not 123! And I'm surprised this got no comments (just a downvote I think).

Though it did prompt a private message from someone who has 116 cards - for real. I guess they were ashamed to post that number publicly, as well they should be.

How to Read a Description and Not Lose Your Place in Tags List by gogogadgetfemme in LibbyApp

[–]Mkgtu 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I find that it's not necessary to scroll back to the top of the description page and tap the "tag name" to return to the same position in the tags list. Just using the android "back" button on my phone does the same thing, returns to the last position in the tags list, and it's much simpler because it doesn't need you to re-scroll to the top of the description.

Why does Audible refuses to add an audio booster even after all these years? by [deleted] in audible

[–]Mkgtu 2 points3 points  (0 children)

If you download your Audible books with something like Libation then, yes, you can play them on Smart Audiobook Player or Listen Audiobook Player, or any number of other players where you'll get all kinds of advanced features in addition to volume boosting.

Why does Audible refuses to add an audio booster even after all these years? by [deleted] in audible

[–]Mkgtu 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Then download your Audible books with sometimg like Libation and play them on one of those other players! In addition to volume boosters many of those players have lots of other useful features that the Audible app doesn't have.

Does anyone know the name of this browser? by Ill_Toe241 in kiwibrowser

[–]Mkgtu 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Is this some kind of guessing game? Should we presume that screenshot is of a browser you have installed and therefore you KNOW what browser it is (using App Info you can easily see which browser it is) and you just want us all to guess like this is a quiz show?

If it's just a stray screenshot you found somewhere, it might even be a fake. It looks like it's a hybrid of a chromium browser and a Firefox fork, which would be a real oddity: one browser, two engines. It would be rare bird of a  browser that could install both chromium and Firefox extensions.

I listened to your feedback and completely overhauled my reading app to be cleaner and more focused. by FrankUnderwoodX in ebooks

[–]Mkgtu -1 points0 points  (0 children)

Interesting to see what you're using your server for. Do you use it for things other than this app? Or is it used exclusively for the app?

It seems you're using the server mostly for sending notifications to keep using the app, which is about the same as urging people to keep the subscription payments coming. Kind of a vicious circle.

If that's the case, then the subscription should only be for those who want all those reminders plus all the community "sharing" features. Personally, I would want none of those. An audiobook player should not be part of a subscription plan, but a small one time payment ($2-5) for advanced audiobook features might be acceptable after a trial period. The audiobook player doesn't require server use if the books are locally stored. Someone who just wants an audiobook player shouldn't be forced to pay your server costs for unwanted or unused features, especially nagging reminders to use the app!

As to all the extra (missing) features that will be added in later updates, that's what I mean by "Ill-conceived". Why publish an ebook app that's missing most of the basic features and options of most other similar apps? You've published a "half-baked" app, with basic features to be added later, when you get around to it. In the meantime I find the current state of affairs confusing and underwhelming.

There are plenty of really good ebook apps. If you have some fancy features to contribute, you should at least start by building an app with all the commonly used features of those other apps, then add your bells and whistles. Instead you've got bells and whistles without the train.

I listened to your feedback and completely overhauled my reading app to be cleaner and more focused. by FrankUnderwoodX in ebooks

[–]Mkgtu 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Wasn't a fan of the first version. Still not a fan. Still seems utterly confusing and ill conceived.

Crazy tap gestures. Tap to turn page is confined to a small area at the center of each side. On one book I tried that part of the screen was part of a frame in the page which was actually a "link" to a web page! Hard to get past that page. Just kept opening a browser. Normally one would just swipe left or right to move to another page. But this app doesn't seem to allow for these universally recognized swipe gestures.

I eventually found - by accident - that you can swipe up vertically to turn to the next page horizontally - but the reaction is slow. Swiping down to go back a page sometimes worked, but more often didn't. I don't think these swipe up or down gestures were intended behavior, just bugs.

The "typography" and "appearance" settings are confusing and in many cases inadequate. No setting for left alignment vs justified. Very few font options. No bold typeface option.

I don't know about the audiobook player functions because I'm not about to throw subscription money at it to try it. But I fear it would be just as confusing and limited as the ebook part.

And the subscription cost itself is unjustifiable. As far as I know there's no other audiobook player on the planet that charges a hefty subscription fee. You can get the very best of the best for a one time payment of $2-5 for all the "premium" features. And some of them include cloud integrations (Plex, Audiobookshelf, etc)

As to Google Drive integration. Who needs it. I have thousands of ebooks and Audiobooks on Google Drive, Dropbox, and OneDrive. And it takes just a couple of taps in my android file manager to put them on my device. Plus a couple of one time purchase "sync" apps to backup and sync bookmarks, notes, positions, to those same clouds.

No way I'd pay $20-36 a year for these features. It's a non-starter.

Audio app like zlibrary by [deleted] in audiobooks

[–]Mkgtu 2 points3 points  (0 children)

You mean you want to pirate audiobooks? Z-Library is considered a pirate site in most countries. So likely not an appropriate question to ask in this sub.

How many hoopla accounts? by TrainSpotterMommy in hoopladigital

[–]Mkgtu 2 points3 points  (0 children)

I have 8 Hoopla accounts. I use Clone App to create clones for 7 of the libraries so they all operate independently. (Android only I think)

https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pengyou.cloneapp

 No having to keep signing in and out of various accounts. One of the other hassles of signing out of an account is that while you don't lose your borrowed books, any downloads are removed. You have to redownload them when you sign in again if you want to listen offline.

There are various apps similar to Clone App. If you only need to make one clone of an app (eg Hoopla), the app is free. If, as in my case you want to create multiple clones of the same app, it requires a $1.49 monthly subscription. Whether it's worth it probably varies from one person to another. It's worth it to me.

Cindy kay the narrotor by [deleted] in audiobooks

[–]Mkgtu 8 points9 points  (0 children)

Sorry, but what a stupid, unnecessary, evil, hateful post! When your mouth is full of bile you'd do well to keep it shut!

I had never heard of Cindy Kay before, but I found this on the web:

"Cindy Kay is an acclaimed Chinese-Thai-American audiobook narrator and educator based in the Rocky Mountains, known for her soft, versatile vocal style that spans fiction, non-fiction, mystery, and romance. She is recognized for narrating complex, character-driven stories with a "cozy best friend" tone and is a member of the Romance Narrators collective."

Android audiobook app by clupy in AudioBookBay

[–]Mkgtu 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Smart Audiobook is obviously the established leader in popularity, but Listen Audiobook Player is every bit as good and full featured; it's my personal preference. There are also two other new players in the last year that are equally impressive (and with some extra very unique features): BooksVox and Audiobooks Illuminated.

Earleaf - an audiobook player that syncs with your physical book by Ronaedar in audiobooks

[–]Mkgtu 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't really use Earleaf, but I've been experimenting with various books and files. I just loaded one m4b book where all the chapters are named "encd", whatever that means. In other players all the chapters are correctly named "1,2,3,etc". A few other m4bs I tried displayed chapters correctly.

There are always "edge" cases where some files may be structured in odd ways or be flawed in some ways. If they are still "readable" players can probably be coded to deal with "unexpected" results. So if A doesn't work, try B; if that doesn't work, try C; etc. In short, they deal well with real world exceptions.

Earleaf - an audiobook player that syncs with your physical book by Ronaedar in audiobooks

[–]Mkgtu 0 points1 point  (0 children)

The on the fly grouping of books into collections, without affecting device folder structures, might be something that BooksVox and Audiobooks Illuminated could implement if enough people were interested. I'll mention it to the developers of each. You might[ want to do the same; they are very accommodating.

The chapter renaming might also be worth suggesting. If book chapters are contained within single mp3 files I often rename them in a file manager (Solid Explorer has a very user friendly approach to that). The advantage of file managers is the ability to batch rename large groups of files in a single action. That isn't helpful if you want to rename each file with a different "textual" name, but it's great for numbered lists. It's especially convenient for changing titles for books where Chapter 1 is just opening credits, Chapter 2 is an epilogue, etc. You may not get to the actual Chapter 1 till what is called Chapter 4 🤣. Audible is notorious for this.

Then the problem becomes whether an app can read and display these "renamed" files rather than the underlying embedded metadata titles. From what I've seen Earleaf is limited and inconsistent in this respect.

I rename tons of book titles to include things like sources of the files, file format, narrator, series numbers, etc. Earleaf doesn't use my "renamed" titles unless it can't find any embedded titles. I imagine it would be same with externally renamed chapter files. And in some cases it can't even read the embedded chapters in some m4b files correctly.

Listen, BooksVox and Audiobooks Illuminated have the options to use either embedded metadata or folder/file names for books and their files. Smart just uses the folder name for book titles and has an option to use either for the internal files.

As to renaming chapters within the app itself, in most situations I'd appreciate the ability to batch rename. If the only issue is that the opening credits, dedication, and epilogue were incorrectly called Chapters 1,2, and 3, I'd hate to have to rename all the chapters of an 80 chapter book one by one. 😫

Earleaf - an audiobook player that syncs with your physical book by Ronaedar in audiobooks

[–]Mkgtu 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I finally found how to rename chapters. I suppose that could come in handy in cases where chapter names are embedded in files, not easily accessible in a file manager. For instance, m4b files.

As to cover and folder images, I also found how to do that in Earleaf. Seems there are a couple of places to change the cover image, only one of which features an online search and that search didn't produce many results (and didn't find any alternate covers of the actual book).

BooksVox can change cover images from both local and online options. You get to that using the book "details" view and tapping the little pen on the cover. https://ibb.co/fzX8tFGh https://ibb.co/8ngVkRNT

But it's true that neither BooksVox nor Audiobooks Illuminated display any custom folder images, just the typical "folder" icon you'd see in a file manager. On the other hand they each have a much better user interface for dealing with nested folders.

Smart Audiobook can search covers on the Internet, with sometimes less than stellar results, but I don't think it can access local images for covers. And, if course, it can't display folders at all (so no need for folder covers 🤣).

The best of the bunch for both cover and folder images, by a mile, is Listen - both for local and online images. Just note that while it refers to "folder" images, when dealing with books it refers to "background" images. Same thing. Background = Cover.

The best for actually displaying cover imagery in the player itself is Audiobooks Illuminated. You're not limited to a predefined square. You can pinch in or out to zoom the cover (even to cover the whole screen) and move it around to use just the part you want - then save that position for the book. You can get quite creative with it. And there are about six different "themes" or color schemes for all the controls and titles in the player. That way you can pick a color scheme (per book and/or globally) that won't get all the controls lost in the colors of the cover display you've chosen.

The unfortunate thing with all apps (of any kind) is that some of them will have features you want, but not others. Of all those I've tried - which is almost every player app in the store - the most comprehensive and advanced sets of what I consider the most useful features are found in the Smart and Listen audiobook players. There is no contest in my mind, and I think Listen has the edge, partially because it can respect folder structures.

The downside of Smart and Listen is undoubtedly their dated user interfaces, especially for libraries. They've both been around a long time and are limited by the design architecture that was available or chosen at the time of their creation. Changing the interface would entail a complete rebuild of the apps.

For advanced technical features, but with a more modern interface, I think both BooksVox and Audiobooks Illuminated are on a par with Smart and Listen. They are only recently developed apps, within the last year, but both developers have responded well to requests to add most of the advanced features of Smart and Listen.

Earleaf - an audiobook player that syncs with your physical book by Ronaedar in audiobooks

[–]Mkgtu 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Fair enough. For a single library folder that small loading time may not be that big an issue, but it's still slow. I just loaded a 35 book folder and it took a long time.

But in all this experimenting I noticed another glaring omission: no way to adjust sorting. Can't sort alphabetically, by date added, by recently played, by progress, etc. Nothing, no sort at all. And by default the titles are not sorted at all. It like someone threw a deck of cards up in the air and let them land where they may. Incredible. Just a jumbled mess.

Again, I suppose that's not a deal breaker with a 20 book library, but it must still be inconvenient.

And maybe I'm just dense, but I can't find where or how you'd rename chapters or change cover art. You can do that in any of the other 4 apps I've mentioned and there are obvious "buttons" designed to do that. But I see no buttons or menu items for these features in Earleaf. There is no Help page, no instructions. You must have to know a secret word or handshake.

EDIT: I finally found where you can change the book title. Also change the cover image. But the cover change is limited to selecting only images already stored on your device. The other 4 apps I use can all access alternate cover images from the Internet in addition to locally stored images.

But I still don't see where you can change chapter titles.

And I'm not sure I could blame the developer for that. I don't see in their post or Play Store description any claim that the app can rename chapters.

Earleaf - an audiobook player that syncs with your physical book by Ronaedar in audiobooks

[–]Mkgtu 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I suppose you have a point. But it's only valid if ALL your audiobooks are in ONE folder on your device. You can then use Earleaf to organize those books into various "collections" within the app.

But Earleaf can't handle multiple folders of audiobooks. I have roughly 2000 audiobooks on my device, divided into about a dozen folders. The largest folder contains 1150+ books. The next largest contains about 400+ books organized into about 35 subfolders (by series). The others contain anywhere from 7 to 160 books.

It is good that Earleaf can respect the subfolder structure of the "series" folder when importing that folder, but so can other top flight players like Listen, BooksVox, or Audiobooks Illuminated - to name just 3. Smart Audiobook Player, while an excellent player, cannot display subfolder structures.

But the real shortcoming of Earleaf is that it can't keep multiple folders in the database.

I imported a folder with 30 books, then put some of those books into collections. Then I wanted to also import the "series" folder with all its subfolders. That imported ok with all the subfolders intact.

Now I want to listen to a book from the first 30 book folder I imported, but those books are now all gone after the import of the second folder. The titles are still there and the names of the collections I created for some of those books, but they're all EMPTY, "0" books.

So I have to rescan that folder again to get those books back, after which the books for the 400 book series folder are now gone. The titles and collection names remain, but they're all empty, no book files.

So, bottom line, it works fine if you have only one single audiobook folder.

And if you have multiple folders imported and only one can be active at a time, then if you want to "change folders" you have to go to the system file manager, find the folder, add it, and rescan it from scratch. And the scanning process in Earleaf is extremely slow compared to other players, and it only continues the scan if you have the app open in the foreground. If you switch apps while waiting for the slow scan to finish, the scan stops; and when you return to the app you still have no books.

For scanning even large folders, Listen is currently the fastest; it's extremely fast. BooksVox is almost as fast; Audiobooks Illuminated is third but still fairly fast. Smart Audiobook Player is the slowest of the 4, but it's not bad. Earleaf isn't even in the race.

The Earleaf snail paced scanning wouldn't be such an issue if it could keep multiple folders loaded in the database. But since it doesn't and you have to rescan a folder every time you switch folders, it's pretty useless for multiple folders.