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Ask HN: best way to read ebooks on the computer

3 points by jonny2112 ↗ HN
Ask HN: best way to read ebooks on the computer.

I have read a few programming books in hard copy that I got out of my library and found that I was able to learn a lot from them, but there is a wealth of free ebooks available online to use. The main issue I have with reading on the computer is when you close a pdf you loose where you are and the next time you open you have to find your way back. Do you guys have any suggestions for ways to read ebooks on your computer.

Thanks

5 comments

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mixmax
I have a hp tc1100 tablet (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_Compaq_TC1100) that I use for reading. It has two distinct advantages:

1) You can disconnect the keyboard so that it becomes easier to handle and more like a book, meaning that you can read in bed, in the sofa, etc.

2) You can switch the screen orientation so that the reading area becomes more like a book (higher and narrower)

Regarding finding my way back I usually just leave a PDF open till I'm done - the spurs me to finish it as well :-)

Zev
I had a kindle for about a week. (Long story short, Took it to class, it broke and Amazon wont replace it). During that week, it worked pretty well for reading things, no strain on my eyes.

Now, i just use Preview on my mac. It saves where I'm at and it's UI does the job.

michaeleinstein
I thought I was a dork b/c I could not solve this problem. PDF's have a bookmark function, am I missing something? Anyway what I do is, close the pdf and then I right click the icon and I click "rename" and I had the page number into the name of the work. Nifty, eh?
jonny2112
Well you got playing around with foxit reader to see if I can get bookmarks to work. I found that you can create bookmarks fairly easily and they are listed in order of creation. With that as long as you remember to bookmark where you are it seems to work. That being said I am still looking for something that does that automatically. I know that Microsoft reader actually does that nicely and I like how when you go full screen it blacks out the rest of the screen so you can focus. But nobody makes .lits anymore so its basically a useless tool.
pasbesoin
My apology if the following is too detail oriented for HN. I've no affiliation with any of the below, just an interest in reading and researching comfortably on-screen.

I was recently looking for a PDF viewer with annotation, and found the following for Mac. Unfortunately, I'm on Windows; otherwise, this looks to be what I was after:

http://skim-app.sourceforge.net/index.html

http://openwetware.org/wiki/Skim_-_PDF_reader_and_annotation...

Skim maintains annotations in a separate file. I would imagine this also allows it to work with locked PDF's, whereas Acrobat Reader won't permit annotating such. The annotations can be merged into an updated PDF for distribution, if needed.

On Windows, the two seemingly most legitimate options I've found are both commercial products with free versions:

http://www.pdfxviewer.com/

http://www.foxitsoftware.com/pdf/rd_intro.php

These both appear to add annotations to the PDF file, and to be limited by the Acrobat permissions assigned to that file. Foxit Reader says it adds some sort of visible component to the presentation of the annotated page, unless you upgrade to the paid version.

I haven't used them, yet. (I've had some hesitation about installing them.) If anyone has better suggestions for the Windows environment, I'd love to hear them.

Noting Johnny2112's comment re MS Reader blanking the background: For blanking the screen (or graying it), donationcoder has a little AutoHotKey based hack that dims all but the focused window. It's named ghoster, and is available in both AHK script and compiled format. Recently, Spyware Doctor has balked on a few things from donationcoder, but this appears (please to check for yourself) to be a false positive against AHK -- other anti-malware products find no problem.

http://www.donationcoder.com/Software/Skrommel/index.html#Gh...