Database Users

Adobe Reader doesn't stop scrolling

I've just noticed something very strange when viewing PDF documents using Touch HD's built-in Adobe Reader LE 2.5: When zoomed into a document and scrolling horizontally by dragging with the stylus, the scrolling just doesn't stop and continues until the view hits the edge of the document! Is anybody else experiencing this?
Here's what I'm seeing in more detail: I zoom into a document (any document, textual or map-based) far enough that the document more than fills the available viewing area both vertically and horizontally. Then I tap and drag the document horizontally. At this point, after stopping dragging and until I lift the tip of the stylus, the document stops scrolling. But, as soon as I lift the tip of the stylus, the document restarts scrolling in the direction I just dragged it and just doesn't stop until it reaches the edge of the document in the scrolling direction. Trying to "catch" the document with the stylus during the scrolling in order to stop it is of no use.
I think I've also noticed that the first couple of attempts at scrolling immediately after opening a new document works fine. The problem sometimes only shows up in subsequent attempts.
This doesn't happen at all when scrolling vertically by dragging. It happens any time the dragging is "mostly" horizontal, but never when I drag "mostly" vertically.
Scrolling around using the scroll bars (by tapping the scroll bar or arrows, or dragging the scroll bar) works just fine.
Could one of you try this out and let me know if you're seeing the same thing?
Some more insights:
The size of the document doesn't seem to make any difference. Small documents or large, it happens every time.
I've played around with "non-linear" dragging. If I drag in an "L-shaped" motion, it appears that the problem only applies when the horizontal portion of the "L" is longer than its vertical portion. Dragging in circles and other jumbled motions produces mixed results.
I came across a map with "bookmarks", where a little "tab" appears near the top of the viewing area in Adobe Reader. When I click the tab, the window splits into two panes, with the top pane showing the bookmark list and the bottom showing the document. When in this mode, the problem disappears. Scrolling by dragging in either direction works perfectly. (And a little faster, oddly.) After I close the top pane, the problem returns. This is the main reason why I think this is an Adobe Reader bug, rather than a side effect of some other software or a setting change that I have on my Touch HD.
I used several other Windows Mobile devices before this one, and on all of them, the software I used for PDF documents was "Adobe Reader for Pocket PC 2.0". (This includes even my AT&T Tilt running WM 6.1.) This "Adobe Reader LE 2.5" is new to me. I wonder if there would be any adverse effects if I tried the 2.0 reader on my Touch HD. I'm worried it might clash with the built-in reader in some bad way. In fact, I'm sure the "Pocket PC 2.0" version of the reader doesn't support VGA (and higher) resolution screens. (I used to use a utility called "Real VGA" on my only other VGA PDA on which I used the Adobe Reader for Pocket PC 2.0 earlier, in order to get it to display documents at the right resolution.) Does anyone here have any experience related to this?
The whole issue evokes an attempt at "inertial scrolling" (not sure if that's what it's mostly called), where, if you "flick" the document with the stylus, the scrolling continues for a little while longer in the same direction after it slows down and stops. If that's what Adobe Reader is trying to do, it's certainly a failed attempt, because there's no sign of a slow down, it never stops, and this happens every time I scroll horizontally by dragging; i.e., even when I did nothing like a "flick".
Anybody have any relevant experiences?

No PDF users around??... Could I really be the only one here who views maps using the built-in Adobe Reader LE 2.5?!

Got something similar happening with PIE, not that that helps ya much!
When in desktop view, any drag continues until the screen is tapped again.

Hmmm... I don't use Pocket IE at all, but that's an interesting clue. Thanks.

I've noticed the issue with the scrolling on PDF documents that require a lot of rendering (note that "lots of rendering" reflects complexity of the document, not size).
It seems that the processor is too busy rendering the document to detect when you stopped dragging the screen (but funnily enough, not too busy to detect when you started).
The solution for me was to scroll using the scrolling bars, as opposed to just dragging the entire document. Either that, or scroll veeeryyy slowly .

milan_ns said:
I've noticed the issue with the scrolling on PDF documents that require a lot of rendering (note that "lots of rendering" reflects complexity of the document, not size).
It seems that the processor is too busy rendering the document to detect when you stopped dragging the screen (but funnily enough, not too busy to detect when you started).
The solution for me was to scroll using the scrolling bars, as opposed to just dragging the entire document. Either that, or scroll veeeryyy slowly .
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thank you for your feedback.
I had thought of the same thing about "the CPU being too busy to detect the end of dragging" too. To experiment with that, I tried waiting for the rotating "wait cursor" to disappear before lifting the stylus from the screen after a drag. It didn't change anything.
I must also state that I see the issue even with a 190 KB (i.e., small) PDF document with nothing but text in a table in it. I don't even see any delay or a "wait cursor" at any point when I'm interacting with this document. But, when I'm zoomed into it and I drag to scroll, it causes the same "neverending pan" behavior.
The point about the scroll bars is valid. I was just trying to check first whether the experience was common, or if it might be due to something goofy that I might have done myself. I guess it's the former...

If you press on the screen and then swipe your finger while maintaining pressure and then stop at the point you like, wait for a moment and then release your finger, you will have full control over the distance scrolled.
However, if you really want to make PDF reading a positive experience, intall diamond acrobat reader le cab that enables reflow on the documents that are not even tagged. It is available on this forum.

sproxy said:
If you press on the screen and then swipe your finger while maintaining pressure and then stop at the point you like, wait for a moment and then release your finger, you will have full control over the distance scrolled.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Nope. Doesn't work for horizontal scrolling. It resumes scrolling in the same direction as soon as I lift my finger and doesn't stop until hits the edge of the document, no matter how long I "wait for a moment".
sproxy said:
However, if you really want to make PDF reading a positive experience, intall diamond acrobat reader le cab that enables reflow on the documents that are not even tagged. It is available on this forum.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Not a bad idea. I might give that a try. Thanks.

Staying on topic about PDFs.
Does anyone know how a good software for the HD to read PDFs?
I went through Team Ones to PocketXPDF and they all had problems.
Team Ones was the best but it didn't seem to display the whole PDF at all, cutting parts at the end and it was heaps slow.
The Adobe one is just shocking.
Want one that wraps the text to fit the screen no matter what zoom, the Team One did this very well.

Do we have any solution for this? Reader 2.5 LE, with reflow mode enabled (needs a change in the registry) is just PERFECT to read eBooks, except for the horizontal scrolling issue. Because of that, I'm reading books in vertical mode.

does any body know how to disable the touchFlow for the reflow in the adobe reader 2.5?

True. It seems Reader 2.5 LE with reflow hack appears to be the best among all. But reflow can be very bad for certain documents..
What I think would be a perfect companion for Reader 2.5 LE would be a scroll hack app..
What the app should do?
1. User inputs the % he/she zoomed the given page for comfortable viewing.
2. Support tapping the 6 spots on screen see attach.(when the reader is running).
3.Scroll accurately the document into one of the 6 positions.
One input may be sufficient for a multipage documents with same lay out.
May be some more flaws in my idea... but seems possible --- anyone??
Too bad that I don't know prog for PPC.
Any way don't fire this newbie
montag09 said:
Do we have any solution for this? Reader 2.5 LE, with reflow mode enabled (needs a change in the registry) is just PERFECT to read eBooks, except for the horizontal scrolling issue. Because of that, I'm reading books in vertical mode.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

Browsing Issue - Hyperlink Selection

I'm very pleased with my HD2 overall, but there's one area where it comes up short in comparison to the iPhone imo: in the default zoomed out browser page view, if you click on a link (which is small, but it does briefly change colour so you know the press has registered), nothing happens - I have to zoom in (with a pinch or double press) before it will work. This is the case in both Opera and IE.
Is there by any chance a config hack to sort this? I'm new to Windows Mobile, perhaps it's a known weakness? Because the link does highlight it makes me think this is more of a software issue than a hardware one, so ought to be fixable/hackable?
Thanks,
Andy

AndyGarton said:
I'm very pleased with my HD2 overall, but there's one area where it comes up short in comparison to the iPhone imo: in the default zoomed out browser page view, if you click on a link (which is small, but it does briefly change colour so you know the press has registered), nothing happens - I have to zoom in (with a pinch or double press) before it will work. This is the case in both Opera and IE.
Is there by any chance a config hack to sort this? I'm new to Windows Mobile, perhaps it's a known weakness? Because the link does highlight it makes me think this is more of a software issue than a hardware one, so ought to be fixable/hackable?
Thanks,
Andy
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
when i go to google.nl and its zoomed out, i click on the right upper side to log in/sign in, so for me this aint no issue.

Just one bump in case anybody else has any thoughts (I appreciate that this isn't an issue for the poster above, but it is for me ).

You can search the forum for a solution (it was posted dozens of times across the place). You'll need to change zoom settings to achieve what you want.
Just note that you'll lose something as well. The current behavior allows you to activate onHover events (stuff that websites do when you move your mouse over an element). With default settings you get popups/menus activated without firing the link action (an option missing in the iPhone browser).

Yes, I'm having the same problem from time to time. Sometimes I can hit tiny targets and sometimes I have to zoom right in to hit a link. I guess it's just a matter of getting used to the capacitive screen.

mrturq said:
when i go to google.nl and its zoomed out, i click on the right upper side to log in/sign in, so for me this aint no issue.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
Thanks, I found the registry setting (software,opera,info,az_overview_threshold), reduced it to 32 and haven't noticed any obvious side effects yet. This makes a big difference for me, especially when I set the minimum font size to medium in the menu settings.

Opera Mobile - "Pinch To Zoom" vs. "Text Reflow" hassle

Hi there,
I am the only one here really annoyed by the implementation of "Pinch To Zoom" inside Opera Mobile ?
First I thought that it was because of my chubby fat fingers but after several tests it definitely is an Opera Mobile issue :
I suppose that because of the text reflow after the pinch to zoom, the screen is never centered where I actually zoomed in but shifted at "miles away" and I have to scroll a lot to find the spot where I actually pinched to zoom in
This is worse and worse as you try to zoom in a lot on a small area, typically in XDA forums if trying to zoom in a lot on the tiny page links at the bottom right of the page " First < 1 2 3 ... Last >" to display them big enough to easily click them with the finger or thumb, I have to pinch to zoom, then scroll a lot to recenter them, then pinch to zoom again, then scroll again to center again, to finally be able to click the link !
I think that Opera Mobile should keep the screen centered on the spot where the pinch to zoom was executed !

Lord.Nibbler said:
Hi there,
I am the only one here really annoyed by the implementation of "Pinch To Zoom" inside Opera Mobile ?
First I thought that it was because of my chubby fat fingers but after several tests it definitely is an Opera Mobile issue :
I suppose that because of the text reflow after the pinch to zoom, the screen is never centered where I actually zoomed in but shifted at "miles away" and I have to scroll a lot to find the spot where I actually pinched to zoom in
This is worse and worse as you try to zoom in a lot on a small area, typically in XDA forums if trying to zoom in a lot on the tiny page links at the bottom right of the page " First < 1 2 3 ... Last >" to display them big enough to easily click them with the finger or thumb, I have to pinch to zoom, then scroll a lot to recenter them, then pinch to zoom again, then scroll again to center again, to finally be able to click the link !
I think that Opera Mobile should keep the screen centered on the spot where the pinch to zoom was executed !
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
It is possible but awkward like you say. I find that if you put your thumb at the bottom of the screen and move up with you index finger (so move only one finger) it recentres better than moving both fingers.

I also get huge fonts (set on "Small") eg http://m.google.com/calendar
sometimes text do not reflow to fit screen.
sometimes clicking on links don't work, no response, BUT zoomin/out works.
weird shtuff

optiknerv said:
I find that if you put your thumb at the bottom of the screen and move up with you index finger (so move only one finger) it recentres better than moving both fingers.
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
I only partially agree
I also noticed that if you do it this way it would center a little bit better as you somewhat keep the screen anchored with your thumb and because you remove the risk of inadvertently scroll a little the text while pinch to zooming or when you remove your fingers off the screen.
Yet if you zoom a lot as for clicking on the damned "< 1 2 3 ... Last>" links it definitely s*cks ! You can see that the text is ok before opera re-render and reflow the text then the text run away

I certainly wouldn't call this a major problem, all it takes is scrolling a little after zooming in, and it's definitely much better than having no reflow - I tried Safari on my wife's iPhone, and it's much more painful.

I agree ...
- it's definitely better than no reflow or no pinch to zoom at all
- it's probably better than iPhone (never gone to the dark side of the force )
but
- if would be definitely better if Opera remembered the position of the center spot of pinch to zoom and then recenter itself there
For most of the links as a word or a sentence underlined or an image link it is OK ... but for the really small links as the <1 2 3 ... Last> ones below it just a pain (maybe you have less chubby fat fingers than me )

Just sticking my oar in, but from an experienced developer's point of view, what you are asking for is a COMPLETE nightmare to develop!
You're actually saying that you want Opera to remember what text is at the centre point of your pinch-to-zoom action, and then find it, after text re-flow, and center it on the page again.
This is ridiculously difficult.
Open an image in Opera and you'll see that it does actually center on where you pinch, but that's obviously because there's no text re-flow in the case of an image. (Incidentally, I mean an image, and not a page with an image on it. The URL should end with an image extension, such as .jpg, .png etc..)
I'm not saying you're all wingers or anything like that, as I too would love this to work in the way you all say you want. I'm just adding a bit of perspective.

I agree it is difficult ... yet not more that rendering the web pages or doing the text reflow itself ! Don't get me wrong, I respect the great job done by opera software ... yet they can do better
Opera is a browser coded from scratch, all the rendering is under opera software developers control. It is not like they are using some memo or third party component to do the reflow and have no control over how it draws itself. They render all the code word by word, letter by letter, pixel by pixel, where they decide to render it. So I suppose they can tag a word or link that will be the center, then do the text reflow, then center back at the right place.
Yet I would also appreciate a simple workaround : a timeout of 1 or 2 seconds to wait after pinch to zoom before the text reflow is done. This way I can zoom my link and click it before it runs away

I usually just double tap because of this. It still works best.

I am 100% in agreement with you. I just bought my wife a iPhone 3gs and I love using safari. I think its a great browser because its very smooth and easy to use. The pinch to zoom feature is very nice I can zoom exactly where I need to go with very little effort. I just received my HD2 Telstra yesterday and have to say that Opera is really bad and not as responsive. I have spent the last couple of hours trying to find a safari like browser with no luck. Lets hope that with wm7 IE gets a little closer to Apples implementation of a browser.
Lord.Nibbler said:
Hi there,
I am the only one here really annoyed by the implementation of "Pinch To Zoom" inside Opera Mobile ?
First I thought that it was because of my chubby fat fingers but after several tests it definitely is an Opera Mobile issue :
I suppose that because of the text reflow after the pinch to zoom, the screen is never centered where I actually zoomed in but shifted at "miles away" and I have to scroll a lot to find the spot where I actually pinched to zoom in
This is worse and worse as you try to zoom in a lot on a small area, typically in XDA forums if trying to zoom in a lot on the tiny page links at the bottom right of the page " First < 1 2 3 ... Last >" to display them big enough to easily click them with the finger or thumb, I have to pinch to zoom, then scroll a lot to recenter them, then pinch to zoom again, then scroll again to center again, to finally be able to click the link !
I think that Opera Mobile should keep the screen centered on the spot where the pinch to zoom was executed !
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

Hi, might I suggest you give opera 10 beta a try , it does not have pinch and zoom which would be good for you also it does have other useful enhancements you might also like.
http://www.opera.com/mobile/

I use double tapping as well so I'm not that bothered with that.
What bothers me more thou is when I click on the link and then go back to the same page it never goes back to the same part of a website. Its soooooo annoying.

Lord.Nibbler said:
Hi there,
I am the only one here really annoyed by the implementation of "Pinch To Zoom" inside Opera Mobile ?
First I thought that it was because of my chubby fat fingers but after several tests it definitely is an Opera Mobile issue :
I suppose that because of the text reflow after the pinch to zoom, the screen is never centered where I actually zoomed in but shifted at "miles away" and I have to scroll a lot to find the spot where I actually pinched to zoom in
Click to expand...
Click to collapse
This annoys the hell out of me, as well - as you say, it's particularly annoying when trying to zoom in on a very small link (like the page numbers of a thread on this forum, or the "jump to first unread message in this thread" link from the contents page).
To those who are advocating double-tapping "instead", that works fine for reading text, but it doesn't zoom in nearly far enough to allow you to click on a very small link. If you could double-tap several times to zoom in successive levels, that would be fine, but you can't - the second double-tap zooms out again. (Any way to change this?)

I downloaded office 2010 mobile and I believe IE was included or I just didn't see it before (New rom and New device HD2). I ran IE and what an improvement microsoft has made. The rendering using the zoom bar seems as nice as safari. The biggest issue again is pinch to zoom. My HD2 rocks but without pinch to zoom browser it pretty much makes it a pain.
Shasarak said:
This annoys the hell out of me, as well - as you say, it's particularly annoying when trying to zoom in on a very small link (like the page numbers of a thread on this forum, or the "jump to first unread message in this thread" link from the contents page).
To those who are advocating double-tapping "instead", that works fine for reading text, but it doesn't zoom in nearly far enough to allow you to click on a very small link. If you could double-tap several times to zoom in successive levels, that would be fine, but you can't - the second double-tap zooms out again. (Any way to change this?)
Click to expand...
Click to collapse

is it possible to disable text re-flow?

ok so this is about the only major bug i have with opera ...you tap to zoom and it flys off and zooms in where you were not looking !!! and if you're zoomed in under the double tap and then try to pinch zoom a bit more to click the tiny "1,2,3...last" on forum links it will fly off again....im forever having to try and find where i was on a page ...soooooooooooo annoying !
how do we fix this ??

how about this for annoying....i am reading a post and the screen locks. i unlock and the browser jumps to the top agsin!

try iris 1.1.9 web browser.. its like safari with webkits support except it was bought by RIM blackberry before it even finetune itself ...non the less it works

I also hope this issue gets resolved. Pinch to zoom doesn't center where I actually zoom in.

Opera Mobile

Opera Mobile 10.1 for Android was released on the Market today.
Works on the Tab and seems pretty good so far - however on my Tab it won't start in portrait mode. If you have the same problem, switch to landscape and you'll be fine. Once it's loaded, you can switch back to portrait.
Regards,
Dave

Oh, I didn't try landscape mode ! Thanks for the tip (off to re-install the app now...)
EDIT: it worked. However I find the font spacing/kerning excessive, the blurry text transitions whilst zooming are highly distracting, and the small text size + lack of adaptive layout rendering (column width auto resizing) means that I am promptly uninstalling Opera now (on the plus side, it loads pages pretty quick...albeit without any Flash capabilities as far as I can tell). Dolphin HD and xScope remains my favorite web browsers, by a long way.

Yep, no flash, few settings, no text wrapping, dodgy Java rendering... a dissapointing beta.

crashed on startup

It just crashes on startup here.

Have you tried switching to landscape before starting Opera as I said in my original post?
Regards,
Dave

Another Tip:
Type "opera:config" in the address bar to access advanced settings for this browser.
I'm currently working on increasing the display cache as it scrolling around shows too many squares...
I want to see if I can reduce that...

Does honeycomb no longer resize text?

Example. On an android phone navigating to a site ( for example wikipedia) when you zoom in text either automatically reformats to fit the screen, or you can double tap and it will happen.
On honeycomb I can't get this to work. I'm currently reading a long article on the web and zooming in ends up with an ios like result where text dies nit reflow.
Any idea how to get this back?

I just realized clicking *single column rendering* brings this back. I'll see if there's a downside.
Getting really annoyed at necessary features being buried in debug.

Use Opera Mobile and it will do it without even needing to double tap.
But yes, it seems that is not like before, because dolphin, miren browsers etc. don't do it.

I would. But the quick controls have me glued to default browser :-(.