Web Reader - Text to Speech Reviews

Use to Love

Bryan 1045

This has not worked effectively since the iOS 6 upgrade. Basic web pages will not be read. Please fix ASAP.

Doesn't work anymore

Kmhunsaker

Really frustrated this doesn't work st all since iOS 6

I am a mother of a two year old with a full time job. I thought I'd have to give up the time I spend reading to spend all of my time after work with my daughter. With this app I was able to continue with my passion to reading without taking any time spend with my daughter. After I put my baby to sleep, I put my wireless headset on while doing household chores. This app made it all possible for me. And it works great! Very professional. Thank you very much!

Works great

Carpetlint

I can store ebooks in Dropbox and listen to them easily with web reader.

Very useful, but rough in places

bruce in calif

Pros: + Very nice voice + Can start reading in the middle of a web page + You can get to the page and have it start reading by accessing a bookmark (you create) in Safari. Read the info on how to. Cons: - Doesn't always deal with re-orenting the screen correctly (displays landscape height in portrait mode) - is too aggressive about starting to speak.... speaks when unplugging iPhone from car radio, speaks if you have it open, then pause and turn off, then on the iPhone, etc. - some words it has trouble with, and mixed english / spanish docs it does not handle the spanish well. - highlighting the currently being spoken text sometimes is not exactly right - had trouble speaking 1 frame of a web site My use: iPhone 4S, iOS v5 and v6. v6 was better, web pages only (I didn't try dropbox, etc.) Well worth it for my use, though still rough around the edges,

DEVELOPER WON'T DEVELOP/FIX

drakedanecl

I used to use Web Reader all day, every day. As a result, I was able to send the developer a long list of problems (many of which others have reported) and various "feature requests". I sent my last email back in 2011; but NO CHANGE; and almost no response. So thank God there is finally a better product called "VOICE DREAM". This does everything and more than Web Reader; and does it BETTER. Occasional crash; but haven't found an app that doesn't crash occasionally. In fact, before VOICE DREAM, I actually had to use TWO apps by same developer, in order to work around all of the issues with BOTH of these apps (Web Reader & TalktoMe). With VOICE DREAM, I need only one app to do everything and MORE than these two apps did. Now I can save hard drive space, by finally getting rid of Web Reader and TalktoMe; and, most importantly, I now have an app that does everything I need it to do. So my entire office will be switching over to VOICE DREAM. List of problems/features reported/requested to developer that were never fixed/implemented: 1. NO SELECT ALL; but often App didn't work well, unless you use the COPY option (many words skipped for some reason) - but, for a while, the COPY to SPEAK stopped working; but was eventually fixed. No easy way to manually select large text dox, by dragging handles - always hit a limit; so I would spend so much time just trying to select text or figuring out ways to get this to work. 2. Sometimes app has trouble with displaying "portrait/landscape" - seeming to display portrait while in landscape or some such - very annoying. 3. HIDE IMAGES not always working properly - meaning images displaying when they should not 4. Unpredictable behavior - app would start speaking on load, even if this option was NOT selected or would unexpectedly STOP reading, in certain situations - more details about this, given to the developer. 5. Hitting FORWARD BROWSER BUTTON causes app to STOP SPEAKING - so no way to easily continue to browse for other articles/blogs, while in the midst of having app "read" a web page. You CAN use the BACK BUTTON or CLICK LINK on current webpage, without interrupting speech; but not the FORWARD button - odd. 6. Additionally, if you click in the address bar to change web page, the app will stop speaking - which agains totally limits how much you can do to prepare the next page for reading. VOICE DREAM handles ALL of this so much better!!! I can continue to fully browse and set up pages for "speaking", WITHOUT interrupting speech. 7. I requested a CUSTOM DICTIONARY; so we could tell the app how to properly speak certain words that occurred over and over again - in some cases many abbreviations have been paired with set words that do NOT always work. Roman numerals are a problem, for example. This was just a request; but not necessary - certainly not a "deal breaker", like most of the other issues. 8. App did not ALWAYS respond properly to headphone buttons, when it should have and often did 9. PDF reading has been implemented; but really doesn't work well, unless the PDF happens to be in the "perfect format" - whatever that might be. However, even when this feature works, I have NEVER had a perfect reading of a PDF. In fact, it is usually just a bunch of garbage words - no words that appear to be on the page or a combination of garbage and actual words. 10. If web pages have any UNUSUAL LAYOUT, Web Reader has trouble either highlight or reading. Again, VOICE DREAMS works so much better, in this situation, due to additional options that Web Reader and TalktoMe don't have. 11. Wondering if a way to SUPPRESS the speaking of URL's, because it is NOT NECESSARY and URL's are often very long and just a bunch of random characters. Seems like this would NOT be difficult to do: to make app SKIP the reading of URL's (or replace with standard word, like "web site"). 12. Highlighting text while reading has NEVER worked properly, as far as I can tell. The BEST that would occur is that an entire PARAGRAPH would get highlighted. And, in the event of a LONG PARAGRAPH, this would hardly be useful. Additionally, I would often notice that the WRONG text was being highlighted - NOT the text being read 13. Requested "FIND ON PAGE" option (like Safari) 14. Requested "MULTIPLE WINDOWS" option (like Safari) - but not necessary, if you can do full web browsing, while listening to the app. 15. "READER" feature (like Safari), to auto pull text out of a web page. I suspected Web Reader did something like this; but wanted something more like Safari. I finally got a version of this with VOICE DREAM. I should note that prior to the list (above) sent, this developer was very responsive; and tended to implement requested changes. However, I never heard back from the developer; nor did he opt to consider making ANY of the changes requested. So thank god there is now another option for those with the need for a serious, professional-level text-to-speech program: VOICE DREAM.

Broken

booyah5

Update>>> Well there's been no change in this app. It still is worthless at this point, and it is clear that no fix is in the works. It looks to have been an abandoned app. I just use iOS's built in copy/speak function though I would like to be able to lock the screen to save batteries, but it is actually functional unlike this app which just takes up space. End update>>> Update >> Unfortunately I no longer use this product because it seems to lock up my device and I cannot access the settings, pause, stop, or have any control over it while its speaking. Weeks ago I loaded a NY Times article and it started speaking all sorts of strange parts of the web page, and so I got frustrated and tried to get it to stop, but it wouldn't. I had to kill the app, but then when I restarted, it just went on reading those meaningless words and freezing with no access to any of the controls. I'd say its broken. I never use it anymore. I only keep it installed in case the dev fixes it. In the mean time I just copy-speak from the native iOS menu. << End update Hey, thanks for the update! I really love having the favorites, and the pause button is really awesome! It's a 5-star app any day of the week. It would be even better though if we had the option of turning off speaking punctuation marks which can get bit annoying. Also, the zoom is still weak and so when you zoom up to punch a ">>" on a web forum it will miss it and rather click the link next to it sometimes. It's almost perfect!

Pretty bad app

Myothep

This app is so frustrating. It reads everything except the full body of the site. I can get it to work right 1 out of 100 times. Don't buy this.

Reads the web 4me in car!

dave.pierce

Reads long pages 4me during my commute that I can't find time to read otherwise! A joy to listen to her...can't believe she's not real! Happy iPhone5 user!

Fails 9 times out of 10

LuisVintheOC

I’ve had this app for six weeks and have tried it on many different websites. So far I’ve been able to get it to work just once. Every other time it fails to process the webpage (the progress icon just spins and spins). I’ve emailed the developer and he responded, "This looks like an bug. I'll have to look in more detail.” but it still doesn’t work. Saver yourself the time and get another app.

Web Reader - Text to Speech Reviews – Page 4