What format does cool reader support. Secrets of the program Cool Reader. "Fat" and "Night mode"

Cool Reader- free program for reading e-books. The program is very convenient and will be especially useful for those who have to read a lot from the screen.

Cool Reader allows you to open FB2, TXT, RTF, DOC, TCR, HTML, EPUB, CHM, PDB, MOBI files. Using the program, you can also view and unpack RAR, ZIP, HA, ARJ, LHA, LZH archives.

You can view the text either as a continuous scroll or as a regular book. You can also customize the background, choose a font, text styles, arrange hyphenation. You can read the book in full screen or windowed mode. Using the SpeechAPI 4.0 and 5.1 voice engine will ensure that the book is read aloud. There is also a text search, a night mode and a bookmark function.

Download the archive with the program from Yandex.Disk using the link below.

Cool Reader does not require installation - just extract the files from the archive and run the file with the .exe extension.

The main program window opens. To change the language, click on the arrow in the upper right corner and select "Settings" from the list.

Then click on the "Interface language" field and select "Russian". To return to the previous window, click on the arrow in the upper left corner - "Back".

Now, in the usual language, again click on the arrow in the upper right corner. Here you can enable / disable night mode, read the user manual and exit the program. Select the item "Settings".

These are the main settings of the program. Here you can change the interface theme, select a language, enable/disable full-screen mode, set the screen backlight time and set its brightness. Just click on the item you want to change, and in the next window, mark the desired parameter with a marker.

We return to the previous menu - the arrow "Back" on the top left. To open a book or file stored on a computer, in the "Open file" window, select the disk partition on which it is saved. Next, we look for the desired folder in which the document or book is stored. Then click on it with the mouse and it will open in the program.

In book reading mode, the menu is located on top. Here you can go to the settings, turn on / off the night mode, view the content, go to the page, open bookmarks, find a word in the text, turn on reading the book aloud, scroll through the pages. By clicking on the small arrow at the bottom right, the same menu will open, where you can still go to the desired position in%.

In reading mode, go to "Settings".

First point "Fonts and Colors"- click on it. Here you can select the font type and size, enable anti-aliasing for text, select the color of the text, background, background texture, adjust the color of the cover. Press "Back".

Now let's go to "Interface settings". Here you can choose which side the toolbar will be located on, and enable/disable the scrollbar.

To set a parameter "Voice to read aloud", you need the voice engine and voice to be set to system settings default. For example, I only read English text. To read Russian-language texts, you need to download from the Internet and install an additional speech engine, and then in the settings select this engine and voice to use by default.

We return "Back".

The "Control" item is only suitable for touch screens. Conventionally, the screen is divided into 9 zones, each responds to a single and double tap of the fingers. Here you can configure what action will be performed when a certain finger is pressed on a specific zone.

In point "Page settings" You can set the book view mode, set the line spacing and page indents. Paging animation is a way of flipping through the pages of a book.

Paragraph "Text formatting" will enable/disable hanging punctuation and kerning. You can also select a dictionary for hyphenation in the text.

Download the Cool Reader program and customize it for yourself - so that it is convenient for you to flip through the pages, the background is pleasant, the text is easy to read, then the load on the eyes will be minimal. I think now you will be happy to read books and documents.

For Android OS. This time we will talk about readers (reader) or, as they are also called, "readers", and start with the most popular apps for e-books.

As you know, the popularity of "readers", and other programs, due to several factors. First of all, it's free, stable, omnivorous formats and user-friendly interface. It is also encouraging that such programs are needed and are popular. Our people love to read, and not necessarily for work.

The hero of this review will be one of the most famous programs for reading - Cool Reader. This application is known to many and has been around for a long time, but this does not mean that it has not changed over time. Some users liked the innovations, while others were quick to abandon them, returning to the previous version.

We will try to figure out whether Cool Reader is so good or whether it is installed more often because of popularity and recommendations. What are the pitfalls of this multifunctional reader?

Cool Reader

Acquaintance

This is one of the most "ancient" readers, which is known to many. Interestingly, the program is thought out to the smallest detail and has undergone many updates. It is distinguished by a minimalistic interface, omnivorous formats, the ability to read books aloud and direct work with zip archives. At the same time, Cool Reader is absolutely free, but for those who want to support the project, there is a special offer that does not obligate you to anything. But let's not get ahead of ourselves, but let's start with dry facts, which are reported by the developer Vadim Lopatin (Vadim Lopatin).

Key features:

• Full FB2 support: css styles, tables, footnotes at the bottom of the page;
• Setting fonts, colors, line spacing, indents, hyphens;
• Animation of turning pages;
• Dictionary support (ColorDict, GoldenDict, Fora Dictionary, Aard Dictionary);
• Customizable actions for buttons and zones touch screen;
• Day and night profiles (two sets of settings for colors, background, backlight brightness);
• Bookmarks, table of contents, text search;
• Bookmarks for a text fragment (quotes, comments, corrections);
• Export bookmarks to a text file;
• Advanced styling with CSS;
• Built-in file browser;
• Convenient list of recent books;
• Support for online book catalogs (OPDS), e.g. flibusta, lib.ololo.cc;
• Access to the LitRes e-book store;
• Reading books from a zip archive.

Beginning of work

After opening Cool Reader, the first thing we see is the question of whether we need on-screen buttons when reading (that is, the “Menu” button is not available, and you can call it while viewing a document by short pressing on the center of the screen).

For some, such information will seem superfluous (“otherwise we don’t know without you”), while those who do not know will torment the screen for a long time without it in search of a “menu”. Both of them will be satisfied, since the window about choosing a buttonless mode appears only when the program is first launched, and there, as they say, “we warned you.” We really liked this kind of care for users. However, when testing, the toolbar is needed like air, so let's leave it.

So we are on the home screen. Everything is very clear here. On the "parquet" background is a list where you can see the latest open files, as well as open books from file system or network sources (you can add one or use the LitRes Internet portal). It also implements a search for a book by author, title, series and rating.

There is also the possibility to search by labels made by the user earlier. There are three points for this: “to read”, “read”, “read”.

By the way, in the upper right corner there is an inconspicuous button that opens an additional menu. The first item is the traditional "About the program", where in addition to indicating its version, links to the official website and the license agreement, there is a tab in the form of a smiley, after clicking which a charitable foundation is opened. Here you can buy various regalia (coins), that is, support the developers financially.

This does not mean that the Gold version will have more features. You will simply be assigned the appropriate status in the program. In other words, you will buy something like a gift in Odnoklassniki, be happy, the developers will get their jackpot, and Cool Reader will still remain free for everyone.

A rather noble approach, which, by the way, motivates honest people. We will not rewrite prices - everything is shown in the screenshot above.

We return to the beginning, click the inconspicuous button again and see five more items: “Open Book”, “Recent Books”, “User's Guide”, “Settings” and “Exit”.

With the first two, everything is clear, but the user manual pleasantly surprised us. The 25 pages contain detailed instructions "what, where, why and why" in this reader. If we suddenly missed something in this article, then it can always be found there. Therefore, we will not go into details, but go straight to the settings.

basic settings

We have a typical list. At its beginning, we are offered to choose the main sorting of books: by author, by file name (descending), by author (descending), by title (descending), by file time (descending).

Next, you can check the box if you want a simple list of files or check the box responsible for displaying / not displaying the cover in the book list. If necessary, select the cover size. It is medium by default. In general, sorting for every color and taste.

In addition, you can enable or disable scanning properties of books in a directory. This is necessary if you do not need the program to sort the books, but display everything as it is. A great solution for those who love "creative mess". If necessary, see only text files, feel free to put a "daw" in front of "hide directories without books".

Skip the choice of interface language and go to plugins. Initially, the plugin of the LitRes Internet portal is used, which, in principle, is sufficient, but if it is not enough for you, then you can always load the necessary one. A little lower, you can enable full-screen and night mode, which allows you to adapt the screen for comfortable reading in the dark. The backing takes on a grainy brownish tint and the screen itself fades out, making for a pleasing viewing experience. However, not everyone is satisfied with this, but this will be discussed below, in the "Disadvantages and bugs" section.

We figured out the basic settings, but the most interesting thing lies in the depths of the program when we open the treasured book.

Book reading

For the main test, we will use a tablet Google Nexus 10 and a randomly chosen book with a funny title and deep meaning in fb2 format. In order for the reader, and ourselves, to be able to understand whether the program is able to open all the declared formats, as well as adequately display them, various works were downloaded in the formats epub, doc, rtf, html, mobi, cbr (comics), pdf and djvu.

Opened the book (fb2), swiped the screen with your finger from right to left. You can just short tap anywhere on the screen to scroll forward. To go back, just tap the upper left corner.

The page started moving and slowed down, although the next ones went like clockwork. Waited five minutes and same thing. It seems that the "reader" goes into sleep mode when idle and is in no hurry to wake up immediately, although Google Nexus 10 cannot be called a "weak" device. Maybe it's in the file? So it weighs a ridiculous 881 KB.

Well, let's try to "play" with other formats, and for clarity, let's draw a pivot table.

So what do we get? Books and magazines in pdf, djvu and cbr formats are not something that did not open or crashed - file manager I just didn't see them.

As for the rest of the formats, you can put a solid "four" for their support. The program does not crash, opens files almost instantly and does not slow down when paging. A little thoughtfulness is observed when opening the first few pages, but then everything is fine, as is the case with the base fb2. Peak load random access memory was noted only when loading .rtf and .html, which is not surprising.

In principle, for two gigabytes of RAM in our device, this factor is nothing, however, on weaker smartphones and tablets (especially older ones, where RAM is no more than 512 MB), the application grabs a significant “piece of the pie” of performance. And the whole point is a heap of many settings and add-ons that most users do not need. But let's not get ahead of ourselves, because soon you will understand everything yourself.

Let's pay attention to the left side of the screen, where the "hot keys" are waiting for us. So, from top to bottom in order: “Go back”, “Contents”, “Search” (possible case-sensitive and search backwards), “Reading settings” (we will return to them a little later), “Bookmarks”, “Home”, “ Night mode”, “Text selection” (so that scrolling through, do not select it by accident), “Page transition”, “Text transition in percentage equivalent”, “Open file” and “Read aloud”.

The last parameter, as you might guess, allows you to listen to a book. A female voice monotonously read the text, and at that time, a spoken fragment was displayed in highlight, by the way, in Russian. In principle, such a decision is tolerable, but, as they say, an amateur. Matilda's settings (it's painfully similar to a robot from OSA) are standard: play, stop, pause, fast forward / rewind, volume, playback speed.

Since we are talking about highlighting the test, then everything is simple. Click on the “hands” icon and move your finger, like a mouse in Word, across the screen (the selection scheme, by the way, is similar to office program). At the same time, a small “menu” appears below, where two “sliders” immediately attract the eye. This is nothing more than “exact text selection”, that is, you can gradually select either words or from the end of a paragraph.

Well, quite convenient, especially if you want to copy a single phrase or application.

Above the "sliders" are six function keys. The first copies the selection, the second allows you to translate the fragment, but for this you need to install the Fora dictionary. This can be done in advanced settings, but be patient, as these options will be covered in a separate discussion.

Next comes the "Favorites" key, after pressing which a new window appears. Here you can make a bookmark, comment on the selected text, or completely change it (your choice). We did not become wiser, but simply multiplied the letter "s" in place of the efforts of the English writer, and also wrote a no less stupid commentary.

Now, to see a separately selected fragment and our work on the text, just click on the checkmark in the upper right corner. The window will close, the text will be highlighted in green, go to the "bookmarks" and see our creation. Convenient and understandable.

We click on the highlighted one, and a menu opens at the top, where there are all the above keys with a description of their meaning. The exception is "Auto Scroll", the meaning of which should be clear to you. The page change speed can be adjusted by tapping in the lower left and right corners. By the way, to call the extended menu, you do not need to select and save a fragment as bookmarks. In the left " quick menu"Under the icons at the very bottom there is a special "arrow" for this.

To understand why the rest of the keys are above the “sliders”, select the text, find the letter icon with the plus sign and press. A small window pops up that allows you to send the selected fragment to the "quick notepad" (we have it installed separately), via Bluetooth, SMS / MMS message or using Google services: Gmail, Google+. And if you have the Facebook service installed, the corresponding icon will appear.

As you can see, the application uses all available communication tools installed on the device. This is very convenient and you do not need to invent a status in in social networks. Next comes the "search" in the fragment and the exit button from the selection.

Advanced settings (text and reading settings)

Font settings

Go to the "Settings" key (or double-tap the center of the screen). So, before us is the first tab: "Font".

Here you can change the font itself (a total of eight pre-installed fonts), its size (from 39 to 170) and check the box next to "bold". If necessary, it is possible to smooth the text or select the line spacing. Here we also select a hyphenation dictionary according to the rules of the required language (17 countries in total) and enable / disable “hanging punctuation”.

Hanging punctuation (protrusion) is hanging some punctuation characters (hyphens, quotation marks, brackets, commas, etc.) outside the text boundary. Designed for optical alignment of text borders: punctuation marks have less visual weight, so if they hang down, the text border will appear smoother. We believe that the text is much more readable with this setting, although it's up to you (below are two examples with hanging punctuation enabled and disabled).

We think that everything is clear here, but just in case, we will make two screenshots: with and without kerning. As you can see, there is almost no difference, but Cool Reader is aimed not only at the general public, but also at picky fans of journalism, and true fans of reading will only appreciate these settings.

Let's move on to image scaling. There is nothing complicated here either. Ordinary pictures and inline pictures (that is, those that are in the body of an online book) can be scaled automatically, or enlarged by an integer number of times. Font gamma correction and minimum space width are designed for a more comfortable display of the page, namely, if you are not satisfied with the sharpness and spacing between words.

Font hinting is used to provide a clearer form of letters on devices with a low screen resolution or when displaying text in small size. Well, the tab is completed by additional fonts, of which, like the main ones, there are eight pieces. They serve to replace the missing character in the main fonts.

In general, the set of tools for working with fonts is more than impressive and should suit the most demanding user. It's all right, let's move on.

Style settings

Tap tab number two - CSS (design styles). Leave the checkbox next to “Allow inline document styles” or uncheck it. This option is configured for each document separately. And then the flooded sea begins for everyone who wants to make the text purely individual.

It makes no sense to talk about each tab. For example, only the "Default Paragraph Format" section contains text alignment, first line indentation and typeface, size, weight, font style, as well as line spacing, underlining, superscripts and subscripts. There is also a text color and indent before, after, left and right. To be honest, we see no reason to turn the reader into a layout tool, but there are those who want to argue with us.

The same can be done with title and subtitle, preformatted text, links, citations, epigraphs, verses, names of text authors, footnotes, footnote links and headings, and annotations. In general, these CSS / style settings for the "reader" are more than enough.

Settings appearance

But the next tab contains completely different settings - the appearance of the document as a whole. The "Full screen" option, according to the developers, does not work on the third and fourth Android versions, in this case everything is full screen anyway. Although after experimenting with this button, we noticed that the screen enlarged a little, and the top information field disappeared in Android 4.3 (charging, network, etc.).

Next comes the choice of the location of the toolbar (aka “hot keys”), that is, it can be installed along the short / long edge, placed on top, bottom, left, right, or completely removed (the last option for those who did not do this at the first program start). We chose the location below. You can also check the box next to "Hide the toolbar in full screen mode."

If necessary, you can select the page display mode: as is and a “scroll” (scroll not from right to left, but from top to bottom). Next, set the page orientation: portrait, landscape, portrait (180 degrees), landscape (270 degrees) and depending on the location of the sensor. By the way, having tried to turn the book upside down, nothing has changed, that is, the book position remained book, and the landscape landscape. Maybe this has something to do with our gadget, although in any case these functions are rarely used, so if this is a bug, then it is insignificant.

But choosing a two-page view mode is worth it, as it looks more like a book. We talked about the night mode, but we will talk about how it works, or rather it doesn’t quite work, below.

We turn to the color of the text and background, where we are offered to try ourselves as a colorist, since the shade of the color that we chose earlier can be changed up to its marking (which, by the way, is indicated). Again, a solution for aesthetes. However, this is not all. You can also change the background texture to wood, parchment, factory, metal, and the like.

Next, change the footer. You can change the font size and the font itself, as well as choose the color of the text. If necessary, turn on / off the book title, page number, number of pages, percentage of read, chapter marks, make the battery charge as a percentage, or disable the header and footer altogether. If footnotes on the pages interfere, then we remove them too.

Let's move on to the paging animation. You can turn it off completely, select a shift by one or two pages, and also turn on the flipping effect (paging). The latter does not look very realistic, but tolerable.

You can choose to highlight bookmarks: by background color and underline. We don't need bookmarks, so we turned them off. And finish the tab for choosing the design of the book, choosing the color of the highlight, comment and correction, as well as adjusting the left, right, top and bottom indents. In theory, everything is clear here.

Control settings

So buttons. You can customize them however you like. For example, the standard action of the Menu key (reading menu) can be changed to lock the screen, turn on the text selection mode, switch the screen orientation, and generally assign everything that is only controlled in the program to it.

That is, the interface of Cool Reader can be changed beyond recognition, and later only you and no one else will be able to use the program, because the usual keys will work in a completely different way. A sort of ego version of the application. It makes no sense to describe what can be bet on a particular key in general, since almost everything can be bet. Go ahead.

The same happens with the touch screen, which is divided into nine active zones, each of which is customizable. For example, select the upper left corner, where the default action is "Previous page / back". Click on it and choose: forward/back 10 pages, first/last page, next/previous chapter, and so on.

It turns out that all the above described types of management are only ephemeral. standard settings, which can be changed, and then write to us that we incorrectly described the control .

If necessary, you can change the additional action from a long press to two short ones. This action is precisely the call of the menu directly from the book, which is carried out by a long tap in the center of the screen. In addition, you can safely put “daws” opposite: highlighting text by double-clicking, scrolling pages with the volume buttons on the gadget, highlighting the screen area when pressed, or completely turn off the trackball.

If you are not satisfied with the left swipe brightness control, please change to the right edge or disable this feature altogether. Don't like scrolling with gestures? We remove the daw and scroll through only the mechanical buttons of the device. Even the selection action can be changed to activate the control panel, copy, search in the dictionary, add a bookmark and simple text search.

Almost all of the same is configured for highlighting several words, and if you wish, you can enable the option “Do not reset selection after closing the dictionary”.

basic settings

We will not repeat and describe all the points of this tab, as it was done earlier. We note only those that are not there, namely the "dictionary". As we mentioned earlier, when we talked about the function keys that appear when text is selected, the Fora dictionary needs to be loaded on its own, and this is done right here.

As you can see from the screenshot, this is not the only reference available in this program. But how to install it? Unfortunately, it is impossible to do this directly from the program, but you need to find the dictionary yourself, download and copy it to the root of the program in the .dict folder. And if you want to return the default settings, then you need to go into the .cr3 folder and delete all the .ini files. The most interesting thing is that support is provided only through email, and the project page itself is located on , where everything is in English.

It was not difficult for us to figure it out, but it is rather unpleasant to waste time. But what about the average user? In our opinion, product support, the simplest reset and loading of dictionaries is not so difficult to implement. But the Cool Reader GL beta project has been implemented (we'll talk about it a little later), which, apparently, will replace all the previous ones, but hands don't reach this version. Otherwise, this tab no longer contains anything new, except perhaps the ability to turn off the backlight of the buttons and remove the icons in the settings.

Drawbacks and bugs

When testing on a Google Nexus 10 tablet, we found a bug: in the process of experimenting with the settings on the main screen, the directories of our file system disappeared, that is, it was not possible to open a book from an SD card. Manipulations with the checkboxes that are responsible for working with directories did not lead to anything. After restarting the application, everything returned to its place.

However, we noticed that when checking the night mode checkbox, our flash drive magically disappears. We uncheck the box and nothing is returned. V Google Play there is also a comment that says literally the following: “…very unstable application. After turning off the tablet and turning it on, my settings and bookmarks disappear, I have to configure them again. Please remove if you can. And so great app, I really like it, but for now I put 4 ". By the way, similar reviews can be read further, but this bug concerns not only tablets. An unfortunate drawback, given the rich functionality of Cool Reader. True, we did not observe any problems with saving the settings - only with directories.

About the night mode, we can agree with the comment: “ …invert the background to black: the black background is not completely black. I don’t know where you got this substrate, but it is not uniform, spotty, this is especially noticeable on the screen of laptop 3, in which black is black. ”. In principle, a soft brownish tint quite suited us, with the exception of graininess. For those who want the perfect black color, we have found a solution: choose a dark design, turn on the night mode and you will be happy. Apparently, developers and users see the background differently for comfortable reading at night.

• Fixed support for .mobi format;
• Additional font sizes included;
• Improved support for OPDS online directories - https, username and password, ORobot TOR proxy can be used for .onion sites;
• Optimized toolbar and menu sizes;
• Improved performance.

Conclusions on Cool Reader

Cool Reader is a rather versatile and controversial project that occupies a leading position in Google Play. On the one hand, this is a convenient multifunctional "reader", on the other - a damp (yes, dampish) product that constantly has to be corrected. As a result, by pleasing some, the developer upsets others. It is clear that it is impossible to please everyone, however, by implementing almost complete self-configuration, how the book you read, and the program interface itself, the developer posted a dry tutorial on working with it, forgetting to build in the option to reset the default settings.

However, do not judge this popular program too harshly, because it is absolutely free and copes with its main function as a "reader" on a professional level. Getting used to it is actually not so difficult, and once you set everything up for yourself, you will not want to part with Cool Reader.

So, let's go through the points: the "reader" should be free (available), support a bunch of formats (alas, not all), be easy to use and manage (a four with a stretch) and stable (alas). Let's try to consider another program by Vadim Lopatin - Cool Reader GL, which is also free. Maybe this time the creator of the app has outdone himself?

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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".

There are no font and padding settings other than "more-less", CSS styles are not supported. 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 application received a pretty nice interface and high speed, but there are too few appearance and control settings.

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 are no Chinese characters either, everything is 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.

V this review considered several applications for reading e-books on a smartphone under Android control. As the main criterion for selection, we used not the support of certain formats, but the popularity of applications in the Google Play store 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, the availability of its support is the main task 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 versatility, both formats are approximately the same: they allow you to include information about the structure of the book, the author and annotations, as well as graphic images, style descriptions, fonts, and other information in the file.

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 good set 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.

Site about e-books and tablets

Secrets of the program Cool Reader.

Cool Reader is perhaps the most famous and widely used book reader for Android devices. 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 own a Sony PRS-T1 or Sony PRS-T2 reader, then we will assume that you already have one of the suitable alternative application packages 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 a fairly large number of e-book formats: fb2, fb2.zip, txt, rtf, epub, chm, pdb, prc, mobi, doc, html. The last two formats are supported for simple documents, which do not contain complex formatting. In general, files of the format html is better open with a browser (for example, Opera Mini), rtf, doc files (as well as docx, xls, xlsx) - with a program office suite viewer. Well, the Cool Reader application does not support pdf and djvu formats 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. Select the view mode - "Pages". Night mode should be disabled (more on "Night mode" will be discussed later). In the settings of the header 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 text indents from edges of the screen If they are left zero, then it will be completely impossible to read, since a shadow even less than a millimeter in size cast on the screen by the frame will cover some of the useful information.For Sony PRS-T1 or PRS-T2 readers (these models have a noticeable frame protrudes above the screen), I recommend setting the left and right padding to 20 pixels, and the top and bottom 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/). Put your favorite fonts in there ttf format(True Type Fonts). 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 are less tired 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. There are a huge number of options for these actions. 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.

Second convenient opportunity- action "Go" (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 who use a standard set of fonts often choose more large size. However, there are a number of specially designed fonts that are specifically 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.

Name: Cool Reader 3
Analog: All commercial book readers
The size: 1200 Kb.
Site: 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 in electronic format takes up 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). Mobile 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 a standard double click of the left mouse button, reads almost all known formats (.txt, .doc, .html, .fb2, .rtf, .pdb, .chm, .tcr, .mobi, .epub, .pml, .chm) , automatically recognizing encodings. Unpacks itself ZIP archives, RAR, ARJ, HA, LZH. “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! Via 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 as a scroll or as normal book pages. To switch between these two modes, use the “Toggle Pages” button on the toolbar. Next to it is the full-screen mode button. 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 It 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 move to the 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