An update on beta 4's features and release date

[nicoverbruggen]

Hi everyone,

I've been dealing with a bit of a flu since last week and I'm still recovering. My agents have been diligently running in the background to let me know all the bugs you've reported, but I haven't been able to work on Kobalt as much as I would have wanted. Right now, rest and my day job currently take precedence when I'm fully recovered.

Since I've been getting questions about when the next beta drops, I wanted to post a little update. Personally, I would prefer to release it over the next weekend (24th of October) if my health allows for it, but I cannot make any guarantees that I'll hit this release date.

Beta 4 comes with many improvements. These two features have been the most often requested:

• Highlights and text markings (marker, underlined, dotted).
• Header and footer customization with six configurable slots.

But also, beta 4 brings these:

• Page previews and easier navigation.
• Half-point font sizes below 32 pt.
• Configurable tap zones and tap/swipe/button modes.
• Remembering appearance settings for new books.
• Cover or reading-page sleep screens, with progress and time left.
• Following Kobo’s warmth schedule.
• Returning to your previous page after a bookmark jump.
• Better footnote popups, including unmarked endnotes.
• Fixed reversed paragraph indentation.
• Restored publisher spacing and drop-cap layout.
• Better custom-dictionary support.
• An “Every page” full-refresh option.
• Optional global custom CSS.

For now, I hope you're all enjoying beta 3. Happy reading!

[johnpahl]

I have really been enjoying Kobalt! I appreciate all the hard work you have put into this project. Hope you feel better soon. Take care

[binaryronin]

Thanks for all the hard work! Take some time and rest!

[ninthart]

Get well soon!

[albertovk]

Thanks, and get well!

[glaucon1984]

Will you add Kobalt to KoboPatch Web UI in the future?

[nicoverbruggen]

Yes, when it reaches v1.0 (stable). The rule of KoboPatch Web UI is that I only ship what's stable there. That's also why I don't have pre-release builds of my mods that are compatible with v6.0.2 on there yet.

[peterboda236]

This looks a very promising project. One small request, when changing brightness or warmth and the popup disappear don't do a full screen refresh.

[nicoverbruggen]

This is necessary to prevent artefacting from the popup. I can add an option to disable the popup however (it should be obvious that the brightness/warmth is changing) which disables the need for a full screen refresh.

[glaucon1984]

A middle ground could be to just give an option to hide the pop-up, no refresh is necessary and the user can already see the brightness/colour temp change anyway.

[nicoverbruggen]

Exactly, that's the plan.

[peterboda236]

That's good. An option would be the best solution. Thanks!

[saturnfreeway]

Love Kobalt on my Libra H2O! Thank you.

Just a few observations:
The dictionary entries remain very small when the text size is increased, would be great if they increased as well.
In dark mode, the keyboard stays light (in Search mode).
On the Stats tab, the big numbers for Chapter, Book and Session are cut off.

And unrelated to Kobalt: the KoboPatch Web UI for the Libra H2O adds an Invert Display option to the toggle menu with Developer Options enabled, which is great.

[peterboda236]

Tried with few other books and looks like something different in this book. But no issue with a nickel reader or KOReader.

[nicoverbruggen]

Ah yes, that's fixed in beta 4. It should be out in ~40 mins.

[saturnfreeway]

Here's the Stats tab

[nicoverbruggen]

Ah, this is in landscape mode and dark mode. I'll investigate what goes wrong and make sure to fix this for the next beta. Thanks @saturnfreeway!

[saturnfreeway]

You're welcome. Looking forward to trying the new beta. Thanks for saving our Kobo's!

[nicoverbruggen]

Beta 4 is now live -- I'm updating the site as we speak. Any new reports can be fresh threads, please.