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Secrets of the program Cool Reader.

Cool Reader is perhaps the most famous and widespread program for reading books on devices running under Android control. With the release alternative firmware for Sony PRS-T1 and PRS-T2 e-readers and others, millions of e-book owners have appreciated the convenience of using this application. The program is simple and convenient, but like any other, it requires some understanding of the possibilities and settings. In this article, we'll take a look at how to best set up and use Cool Reader to enjoy your e-book screen reading experience.

If you are the owner of a Sony PRS-T1 or Sony PRS-T2 reader, then we will assume that you already have one of the suitable alternative packages applications from boroda, rupor or amutin. We will also assume that the Cool Reader application is already installed. If not yet, then you can easily do it by referring to the links at the end of the article.

Let's start with the start of the program. "Coolreader" can be launched in several ways: 1. Tap on the icon on the main screen of the e-book or in the "Books" menu and then select the application. 2. By making a long tap in the file manager on the book you are interested in (and then selecting "Cool Reader"). 3. Tap on the "Cool Reader" icon on the third page of the main screen (or tap on the "Cool Reader" icon in the Zeam Launcher or AWD Launcher program list). 4. Tapping on the top black strip of the screen ("Bar Shortcuts" will open) and then selecting the application. In the last two cases, depending on the last state of the program, you can get either to the "Open book" menu or to the text of the last book that you read in this program. In this case, to open another file, you will have to press the "Menu" key and select "Open Book".

Main screen of e-mail Sony PRS-T1 books

Choosing an application for reading from the main screen

File manager (Total Commander)

Selecting an application from the menu file manager

Page 3

Selecting an application from the menu Bar Shortcuts

Cool Reader. Select "Open file".

Cool Reader. list of files For loading.

Cool Reader understands quite big number e-book formats: fb2, fb2.zip, txt, rtf, epub, chm, pdb, prc, mobi, doc, html. The last two formats are supported for simple documents that do not contain complex formatting. In general, it is better to open html files with a browser (for example, Opera Mini), rtf, doc files (as well as docx, xls, xlsx) - Office program suite viewer. well and pdf formats and djvu application Cool Reader does not support in principle. You will need to install Orion Viewer to view these documents.

However, back to our program. By pressing the "Menu" key in the book reading mode and selecting "Settings", we will be taken to a page containing five tabs. On each of these tabs are grouped different kinds application settings. In each menu, the list extends beyond the bottom edge of the display and can be scrolled by sliding your finger across the screen in a vertical direction. In some versions of Coolrider adapted for the Sony PRS-T1 or PRS-T2 e-book (an example of such a version is 3.0.57-8), you can scroll through the lists of settings by pressing the page scroll keys. Many settings items provide access to additional sub-settings (these items are marked with a ">" sign).

Tab 1. Text settings.

Tab 2. Style settings / CSS.

Tab 3. Page settings.

Tab 4. Control settings.

The first tab refers to the text display settings. Here you will need to choose a font that is easy to read (how to add your own fonts to the system will be discussed below), specify its size and line spacing. Most users leave the rest of the settings as shown in the figure. You can try turning on kerning, then the distance between "overhanging" and "bulging" characters (for example, the distance between the letters "G" "D") in most fonts will be displayed more accurately.

The second tab is dedicated to styling and CSS (Cascading Style Sheets) settings. As a rule, there is no need to specifically configure something here. Check "Allow inline document styles" and, if desired, adjust the font size and line spacing for footnotes: the values ​​in the "default" settings seem too large to many.

The third tab is page settings. Be sure to check " Full Screen", otherwise you will not see the header, and when scrolling through the pages, the bottom lines of the previous page may be displayed on the next one. Select the view mode - "Pages". Night mode must be disabled (more on "Night mode" later). In the header settings, you can specify what information and in what form (font, presentation) should be displayed while reading in the top line of the screen when the full screen mode is on (clock, battery charge, book title, chapters, etc.). You also need to adjust the text indents from the edges of the screen. If they are left zero, then it will be completely impossible to read, since the shadow, even less than a millimeter in size, cast on the screen by the frame, will cover part useful information. For Sony PRS-T1 or PRS-T2 readers (for these models, the frame protrudes noticeably above the screen), I recommend setting the left and right padding to 20 pixels, and the top and bottom padding to 10.

The fourth tab refers to the control settings for the Coolrider. Here, everyone should set the values ​​"for themselves", indicating convenient actions for the buttons (separately for short press, long press and double press) and for screen taps (these settings will be discussed below). It is also necessary to define the action at which the dictionary will be opened.

Adding your own fonts

Setting the paragraph format (paragraph) by default

Type selection menu set of dictionaries

Setting up tap zones touch screen

Earlier I said that you can add any fonts for reading books to Cool Reader yourself. It's very simple. Create a fonts folder in the root of the READER drive (from the device's point of view, this is the /mnt/sdcard/ folder) or in the READER/.cr3 folder (/mnt/sdcard/.cr3/). Place your favorite ttf (True Type Fonts) fonts there. If you need to use fonts that have the otf (Open Type Fonts) format, then you must first rename the files, replacing their extension with ttf. Next, restart Cool Reader. In reading mode, press the "Menu" button and select "More" - "Close" in sequence. Then restart Cool Reader in any convenient way. Go to "Settings", select the 1st tab and tap on the item "Font". The fonts you add will appear in the list of fonts available for use.

I really like the fonts "Myriad" and "Georgia eink", specially "sharpened" for displaying text on a low contrast screen. The first of them is "chopped", the second with "serifs". Examples of text images on the screen of an e-book, made with the mentioned fonts, are given at the end of the article. There are also links where you can download these fonts.

A few words about "Night mode". It is intended primarily for color radiating screens (TFT). In low ambient light (or even in the dark), the eyes get tired less if the text is displayed in soft letters on a dark background. In the case of using Cool Reader on an e-book with an e-ink screen, it makes no sense to use "Night mode": it is almost impossible to read in this mode either during the day or at night.

Many users accidentally turn on "Night Mode" and then ask: "my text is displayed in gray letters on a black background, how can I return everything back?" To turn off "Night mode", you can go to the third settings tab and uncheck "Night mode". This is not easy to do, as the settings menu will also be displayed in gray on black. There is a more convenient way: press the "Menu" button and select "More" - "Day mode" in sequence (see image on the right).

On the fourth tab of settings, there are two very important items that I mentioned earlier. These are touch screen action setting and button setting. If you go to the touch screen settings, your device's display will be displayed, divided into nine sensitive zones. Having made a short tap on any of the zones, you will see a menu in which you can select the action called by a short tap on the selected zone. Similarly, by making a long tap, you can determine the action for a long tap. Options for these actions - great amount. Full list action is shown in the image on the left.

The keyboard is configured in the same way. Go to the "Buttons" item and select the name of the button and the method of pressing - short press, long press or double press. A huge list of options will open (same as the touch screen setup, see image on the left) from which you can choose the one that suits you best.

In general, we have considered all the basic settings. I will not dwell on how to use Cool Reader for reading. We can all read. Use taps and buttons to perform pre-configured actions. It is worth noting two convenient possibilities. This is the "Bookmarks" menu (in reading mode - the "Menu" - "Bookmarks" button), where you can create an unlimited number of bookmarks for each book and then follow these bookmarks to the desired pages.

The second convenient feature is the "Go" action (button "Menu" - "Go"). By selecting "Go" in reading mode, you will be able to navigate through the open book in various ways (going to a specific page, to the contents of the book, etc., you can even go to the previous book that was previously opened in the Coolreader). If you select the "Go" item in the file browser mode (you can get to this mode by the "Open file" action), then another list will open that allows you to go to the root of the file system, to the last books that were read in the program and to online catalogs.

Go menu (read mode)

Go menu (file browser mode)

Menu "Online catalogs"

Go to detailed Cool Reader instructions

What are online directories? This is the ability to directly download e-books from online libraries into Cool Reader. It is quite convenient to use this functionality to search and download books from the popular Flibusta library. The found book immediately opens for reading. When working with online catalogs, you must first establish an Internet connection via a Wi-Fi network.

In file browser mode, you can quickly navigate to detailed instructions for working with Cool Reader. To do this, press the "Menu" button, select "More" and tap on the "User Guide" item.

I mentioned earlier that the Cool Reader application allows you to use additional fonts added by the user. Low-contrast screens (such as e-ink e-book screens) tend to make letters written in thin lines appear paler than those written in thicker lines. e-book owners using standard set fonts, for ease of reading often choose more large size. However, there is whole line specially designed fonts specially drawn with bolder lines. Text rendered in these fonts looks great on e-book screens at normal, "unsized" sizes. The images below show examples of the same text in sans serif and serif fonts. Both of these fonts are specially adapted for display on a low-contrast screen. These fonts can be downloaded from the links at the end of the article.

Cool Reader is completely free and distributed under the terms of the GNU General Public License. Application developer - Vadim Lopatin (buggins). If you like this program (and you can't help but like it by definition), then you can support this wonderful project. To learn how to do this, press the "Menu" button, select "More" - "About" and open the third tab. Below in the section ". Be sure to indicate the model name, firmware version, name and version of the application package. Describe what actions led to the incorrect operation of the device.

Supported formats: EPUB, PDF.

Due to the extremely small number of supported formats and the minimum set of settings, it is unlikely this application fits the role of a full-fledged "reader".

No font and padding settings other than "greater-less", not supported css styles. Third-party fonts are not installed, although you can download a package with additional ones from the Internet. True, many of them did not make friends with the Russian language, so the benefit of changing the font is minimal.

In general, the Aldiko Book Reader app has got a pretty nice interface and high speed work, but settings appearance and too little control.

In fact, the main advantage of this program is that it is a PDF reader for Android. Pretty simple and fast.

iReader

Supported formats: EPUB, MOBI, TXT.

An app with a promising name turned out to be useless for users unfamiliar with Chinese characters. The menu is almost completely translated into English language. Judging by the need for Internet access, the application opens up access to Chinese bookstores.

However, iReader practically cannot cope with Russian text, so we consider it completely inappropriate to install the application as a regular "reader".

iReader offline

Supported formats: TXT, CHM, MOBI, PDB, UMD, HTML, images.

The iReader offline application from the same developer behaves quite differently. There is no Russian interface language here, however, there is no Chinese characters, all translated into English.

The number of supported formats is small, but this application was the only one of them that effortlessly coped with the complex help file of the CHM format created in Help & Manual 6.

The developer approached the design of the settings in an original way. At first glance, there are not enough of them here, and everything is dumped and mixed on one page. However, they are quite enough to carefully customize the appearance of the text and controls.

Another thing is that for CHM, most of the settings are useless, and for reading fiction, there are applications that support a larger number of currently popular formats.

This review discusses several applications for reading e-books on a smartphone running Android. As the main criterion for selection, we used not the support of certain formats, but the popularity of applications in the store Google Play and search query by the word "reader". It is from there that you can download readers for Android, which for the most part are also distributed free of charge. As a result, the list of tested applications turned out to be rather motley. Some programs are able to work with a large number of formats, while others are “sharpened” only for EPUB and PDF. Including all readers can work not only in Android 4, 4.1 and older, but even Android 2.3, or even 2.2!

Nevertheless, it is the EPUB (Electronic Publication) format, created by the international organization IDPF, that is the most common, and its support is the main task of any application. Unlike it, the FB2 format was developed by Russian specialists, so its popularity, as a rule, does not go beyond the boundaries of the Runet. However, for Russian-speaking users, support for the "native" format can be the main factor when choosing an application.

In terms of universality, both formats are approximately the same: they allow you to include information about the structure of the book, the author and annotation in the file, as well as graphic images, style descriptions, fonts, and other information.

Supported formats: EPUB, FB2, TXT. Partially - EPUB 3, HTML, MOBI (without DRM protection), RTF, DOC. In the future - PDF, DJVU.

This is one of the most popular applications, equipped with a good set of settings. In addition to changing the main parameters, FBReader allows you to set your own background and font, look up the meaning of a word in a dictionary, use network libraries and connect your own OPDS catalogs.

As a rule, there are two main requirements for text readers: a large number of supported formats and convenience for reading.

Average rating on Google Play: 4.5, size: 3.58 MB. I must say, the first requirement Cool Reader answers completely: this application supports formats such as fb2, epub, txt, doc, rtf, html, chm, tcr, pdb, prc, mobi and pml, which allows you to view books practically all formats that can only be found. At the same time, it requires android version above 1.5- almost all modern devices fall under this requirement. And, importantly - Cool Reader is completely free and even does not contain ads, so we were obliged to consider it in more detail.

Appearance and interface

The main thing menu looks like very nice due to the images of the covers of the last opened books. At the same time, for the book you read last, and is displayed the time it was last opened, and the percentage you stopped at. You can also open from the main menu file system device, or use convenient search: the program automatically sorts your saved books by authors, series, rating, and also allows you to mark read in this moment and books read.

Separate the advantage is the possibility quick access to network libraries directly from the application, without having to go to the browser and download books. The library will be especially interesting for Russian-speaking users. LitRes.

Appearance in view mode depends on screen size: text occupies on phones all space, and the menu is opened by pressing the center of the screen, while on tablets there is a very small side panel, and tap on the screen reveals it. At the same time and the font and background texture are very pleasing to the eye, unlike a number of similar applications, with prolonged use of which the eyes simply get tired.

So let's take a look at what tools there are to view text:

1. Browsing content with the possibility of a quick transition;

2. Search by text case sensitive or not;

3. Settings menu, which will be discussed in more detail in a moment.

4. View and adding bookmarks;

5. Back button to the main menu;

6. Turn on night mode;

7.Mode highlighting text;

8. Transition to specific page or to a percentage position from the beginning of the book;

9. Reading the text aloud.

Even a simple enumeration of the possibilities is already impressive, but the main advantage Cool Reader in front of competitors is in the settings menu.

Setting

And the setting in Cool Reader lends itself to almost everything. The program provides for many changeable parameters, that they are divided into as many as 5 sections. In the first two tabs, the user can change the font to one of 19 predefined fonts, adjust the size and weight of the font, and fine-tune CSS for various paragraphs (for example, highlight quotes or footnotes in a special way).

The third section of the settings menu allows customize interface view: page orientation, text and background color, scrolling animation, indents and a number of other parameters. Other elements can also be configured, for example, controls: you can appoint various action for clicks on different parts of the screen, buttons and so on.

Summarizing

Cool Reader is an excellent "reader", which offers quite a lot of features and supported readable file formats for its size, especially considering its free. It is important to note, that not every paid application allows you to fine-tune it "for yourself". Users have also appreciated these advantages: the number of downloads has long crossed the threshold of 10 million.

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One of the most popular programs for reading books is the Cool Reader program developed by Vadim Lopatin. The author has created a unique algorithm for splitting text into pages, in which the image on the screen is as close as possible to the paper version. Unlike most similar programs, footnotes in the text are shown at the bottom of the page. The program is multiplatform. It is applicable to operating Windows systems, Android, Symbian, some e-books running Linux OS ( Jinke/LBook V3/V5/V3+/V60, Azbooka N516, Pocketbook, Amazon Kindle, Onyx Boox and some others).

This article has reviewed fine tuning Cool Reader for operating room Android systems. The author of the article made changes default settings, which, in his opinion, made it possible to obtain an image on the screen of the device, close to the text of a paper book. You can follow suit or make changes to the settings of your choice.

All images used in this article were taken with the Nook Simple Touch.

Cool Reader main screen

The figure on the left shows the screen in read mode. In the header of the screen on the left, when reading FB2, EPUB files, the author's first and last name, as well as the title of the book, are displayed. When reading TXT format, the filename is displayed at this location. The right side of the header shows the ratio of the number of pages read to the total number of pages in the book. It is followed by the battery level as a percentage.

Under the header is a progress bar of the material read. The thick line corresponds to the percentage of the book read, and the thin line corresponds to how much is left to read. The thin line is separated by strokes showing the ends of the chapters of the work being read.

Above the footer is the menu call icon , to the left is the “back” icon.

To call up the main menu, touch the menu icon or the middle of the screen (default setting). To go to the program settings, click on the "Settings" icon.

The main menu of the program contains five tabs. Let's consider them sequentially.

The first tab of the menu "Settings".

The first tab with the image of two letters "A" allows you to customize the main font of the book. To achieve the most bright, eye-pleasing font, you can select it from the list of available fonts in the device, or add it in advance special fonts .

The hyphenation dictionary is responsible for the correct splitting of the word into parts when transferred to the next line, line spacing you can achieve more lines on the screen, hanging punctuation is responsible for indenting the last line before the new chapter.

The second tab of the menu "Settings".

This tab controls the styles of all other text blocks - epigraphs, chapter headings, annotations, etc. We will correct them sequentially.

Almost every book begins with an abstract. If you scroll to the bottom of the CSS tab, you can see the "Annotation" item. By default, annotation text is printed in italics and is the same size as body text. You can open the font size tab and make it slightly smaller than the main font of the book - for example, select the "Reduce by 80%" item.

You can change the title fontusing the menu item "Header", but in our opinion it is quite bright and readable, but the text of the epigraph, as well as annotations, can be made somewhat smaller than the main text.

The footnote text style can also be reduced to 80% in the Footnotes menu item, and the footnote number style enclosed in square brackets (Footnote Link menu item) can be reduced to 70% of the body text size. In addition, in this menu item, select "Font Style" - "Italic".

With these settings, the text in Cool Reader looks more like a paper original.

The third tab of the menu "Settings".

Here are the menu items that are responsible for the position of the text on the page, the background and text colors, as well as the presence of the toolbar. The menu is very simple and easy to understand. In this tab, you can leave everything unchanged.

Fourth menu tab.

There is a lot of room for creativity in this tab. If you are the lucky owner Nook Simple Touch, With firmware from Zerolab then we recommend changing the program control keys. Go to the "Buttons" menu and change the action of the "Menu" button from "Reading Menu" to "Next Page", the action of the "Back" button to "Previous Page". This will give you the ability to turn pages in Cool Reader using the buttons with either hand.

In the Touch Screen menu, you can customize any of the nine touch zones the way you want. Moreover, two functions can be assigned to each of the touch zones - for short-term and long-term pressing. You can generally disable all actions by making the program screen insensitive to pressing (with the exception of the status bar) and use only the device keys.

The last (fifth) tab of the menu contains system settings programs - interface language, dictionary settings, book cover properties. Everything is fine here and nothing can be changed.

How to add online catalogs (OPDS catalogs) to Cool Reader is written in the section "Digital Libraries" .

You can download the program for free from the Google Play Market.

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Name: Cool Reader 3
Analog: All commercial book readers
The size: 1200 Kb.
Website: http://coolreader.org

“How good it is to be able to read! No need to pester your mother ... ”, - everyone remembers this simple, enthusiastically childish recitation. However, in recent years, in addition to the desire and ability to read, more and more often we lack the opportunity. Prices for good books “bite”, and getting them is becoming more and more difficult. Therefore, literature in electronic form takes more and more space in our lives. And to put the bytes of information in an understandable form, easy to use and not tiring the eyes, is easiest with the help of Cool Reader 3 (CR-3), is a program optimized for reading fiction in electronic format. It installs quickly, does not take up much disk space and will immediately become indispensable for those who, on duty or “pleasure for”, have to study large amounts of text from the screen. And you can put such a “reader” as on standard Windows and Linux on the computer, and in e-book(our program also supports versions that work on electronic ink (e-Ink) - Jinke/LBook V3/V5/V3+/V60, Azbooka N516). Cell phones also not deprived of attention - Cool Reader-3 will go to both Android and Symbian.

Installed, "reader" is a classic black monogram "CR" in a white rim on the desktop. Opens with standard double click left mouse button, reads almost all known formats (.txt, .doc, .html, .fb2, .rtf, .pdb, .chm, .tcr, .mobi, .epub, .pml, .chm), automatically recognizing encodings . Independently unpacks ZIP, RAR, ARJ, HA, LZH archives. “Understands” tables and illustrations. And with all this wonderful feature set Cool Reader 3 can be downloaded for free, and using it is as easy as shelling pears - open, select "File" - "Open" and, - enjoy your favorite work! By using Cool Reader 3 you can also format and convert texts. There are flexible styling options using CSS files, bookmarks, text search and hyphenation dictionaries. You can read the downloaded file with a scroll or in the form of ordinary book pages. To switch between these two modes, use the “Toggle Pages” button on the toolbar. Next to it is the power button. full screen mode. After pressing it, the toolbar of our reader and the panel Windows tasks disappear, leaving you alone with the text. Working in this mode, you will have to use hot keys, but you can simply right-click anywhere on the screen - a list of commands will be displayed, from which it will be easy to select the one you need.
The Android version includes page-turning animation (by sliding or as in a paper book), a built-in file browser, brightness adjustment by moving a finger along the edge of the screen, support for dictionaries (Fora Dictionary, Aard Dictionary, Golden Dict, Color Dict) and searching for a selection in them. the words,

the ability to select text and copy the selected to the clipboard. also in Cool Reader3 for Android there are night and day profiles (two sets of backlight brightness and texture / background and text colors). You can independently customize the actions for the buttons and tap zones of the touch screen (3x3). And it is very convenient to sort books in the file browser by title, author, and even by the time the file was created. Flipping through an open book will turn out as a sensor or joystick, as well as volume keys. By the way, the rotation of the image on the sensor also does not disappear anywhere.
In addition to basic skills, Cool Reader 3 also reduces eye strain by reformatting text to any font size, with a customizable palette, textured backgrounds, smooth scrolling, and the ability to smooth screen fonts. And she also “remembers” the page on which you stopped - you don’t have to flip through everything from the beginning. However, you can disable this feature if you wish. The only thing missing from Cool Reader-3 is the ability to compile a library. But the clever program remembers the last books opened in it. And in order to quickly go to desired text, it is enough to display this list on the screen.

Thanks to its undeniable set of advantages, Cool Reader 3 has long acquired a solid circle of fans, expanding every day. Try it too!
Cool Reader 3 free download can be found on the official website of the program