Scriptures Presentation Mode, LGTV WebOS Browser Support

Discussions about the Notes and Journal tool on LDS.org. This includes the Study Toolbar as well as the scriptures and other content on LDS.org that is integrated with Notes and Journal.
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phyatt
New Member
Posts: 1
Joined: Mon Feb 14, 2022 11:57 am

Scriptures Presentation Mode, LGTV WebOS Browser Support

#1

Post by phyatt »

(A side note about this forum... it is really hard to search for "TV" because anything shorter than three letters can't be searched in the forum. :cry: Hopefully I am not repeating what has been said in the forum too often. )

Family scripture reading with a smart tv can be fun experience. I feel like it focuses more people in the room and can go really well and encourage family scripture study. Also with young kids, it can be a learn to read exercise if done right.

I've done "tv scriptures" many times across the years with
  • a macbook connected to the tv
  • a pc connected to the tv
  • a RPi connected to the tv
  • Android mirroring its screen with a Chromecast to a tv
  • and recently with a LGTV, webos browser
The first couple of solutions above weren't too bad. You have to scale everything, and then you can use something like Stylebot to turn off elements you don't like. But that is still can be a rough experience for a lot of users.

Dark themes are great! I think it makes reading easier in the evening on a TV.

Scrolling thru long chapters is difficult with a remote control scroll wheel.

The LG WebOS browser does not look good at all for the scriptures. Most of the CSS is not handled correctly. And when zooming in, everything gets squished down to two words per line with huge margins on either side.

Also after zooming in a fair amount, most the the toolbars should have an option to be hidden, or in the gears for hiding the footnotes, there should be a "TV" mode or presentation mode, or something.

Maybe having a dedicated app for the LGTV ecosystem could work, but as of right now, I feel like my TV shines on most other content, except the scriptures.

I'm considering making a mirror of the scriptures site that strips the CSS that is broken in the WebOS browser and makes it readily presentable, since I can't use Stylebot in the lightweight TV web browsers.

And if you highlight a word to help someone see what verse or word they are on, the highlighting tools pop up and cover half the screen or more.

So in summary, I want:
  • Scriptures that can be seen from across the room on large screens
  • Easier navigation for long chapters with less scrolling involved
  • UI cleanup when the zoom gets high
  • Testing for a variety of major TV brands browsers
  • A enable/disable for the highlight/note toolbar and some other nav bars
  • Maybe a dedicated app for LGTV and other smart tvs that have apps besides their web browser tool
I hope my tone doesn't come off as overly negative or entitled. I am grateful for the hardwork of the church and individuals to make the scriptures accessible and usable with all the new technology exploding across the landscape.

Thanks again.
mevans
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Posts: 2049
Joined: Tue May 22, 2012 1:52 pm
Location: California, USA

Re: Scriptures Presentation Mode, LGTV WebOS Browser Support

#2

Post by mevans »

There seems to be a very small development team at the church and it's a big enough challenge just to get the study tools to work in a web browser. Chrome seems to work the best and I generally have a comparable experience with Firefox. I've given up trying to use Safari with study tools. For a while there was a Windows 8 app, but I believe even that couldn't get sufficient attention and is no longer maintained. So...I doubt that we'll see any dedicated TV apps.

Now...you mentioned CSS problems...you may have some hope there. If you've found situations where CSS is broken, but maybe Chrome handles it gracefully and other browsers do not...you could submit Feedback detailing the technical issue. The official Feedback form doesn't let you include a lot of text or format it, so a strategy I've sometimes used is to provide a better description here in the forums and then provide a link to the forum URL in the Feedback message. If you can do things like point them to technical documentation showing how it's broken, that will probably help.

The Feedback link can be found at the bottom of most pages (in study tools it's at the bottom of the left panel). When you submit any feedback about a problem on the church website, you'll likely get a canned response telling you that most problems on the church website can be solved by clearing your cookies. You can save yourself a step by clearing your cookies and verifying it's still a problem and then telling them that you've already tried clearing your cookies. The initial people handling your inquiry will likely not be technical, but if you interact with them a few times, your issue may get transferred to technical personnel who do know what they are talking about. You won't necessarily know that it's been transferred to someone else, but it does happen. At least if they agree there's a technical issue, you might get it on the backlog. That doesn't mean the problem will get resolved any time in the near future (or ever), but at least it has made it to the proper decision makers.
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