READING FULL WEB PAGES WITH UNREADABLE TINY FONT ON A 6"-7" SCREEN
[This article has been replaced by the later article of February 5 Some changes were made recently that affected how text adjustments are made.]
SO, here's to a good 2012 to all -- definitely it was good to take time off from the usual to relax and celebrate and to have a calendar system that makes us feel we have a new start :-)
Welcome! to all the new Kindlers and visitors to this blog and Thanks to the regulars.
In the blog article with many general tips on using the Kindle Touch and Kindle Fire, I went into detail on dealing with web pages or with PDFs in which you can see the full page but which are usually unreadable in that format or screen width that is considerably smaller than our computer screens.
I've found that many news-site reviewers still don't know about a valuable Android feature that is crucial to enjoyment of web pages on small devices (this applies to Android smartphones also), and of course those just using a device like the Kindle Touch or Kindle Fire won't tend to know about them either.
So I'll focus on just this topic here, with all the new Kindle owners after the holidays and because those who did read the earlier article will probably find it difficult to remember where they may have read about tiny fonts on web pages and probably skipped the section anyway in an article that included many other tips.
While joining in discussions on the the Amazon Kindle Forums community where so many Kindle owners hang out to help other owners and get tips in return, I saw the following question and replied to it more briefly than I do in the blog article -- it's likely that a shorter answer can be more helpful, at least at first.
' Posted on Jan 1, 2012 10:00:01 AM PST
RE says:
[Q]: I like my Kindle, but can't figure out how to surf the web and be
able to read things. Yahoo com is so small a magnifying glass is
needed to see it. I know this is off subject, but can someone tell
me how they do it?
[A} in reply to an earlier post on Jan 1, 2012 8:11:12 PM PST
Arts&HistoryFan/Kindleworld says:
RE,
You can use an Android feature to pinch-zoom the font/text to a large size, to the point the paragraph of a column extends beyond the screen borders ... then double-tap the screen, and it will keep the large font while adjusting the text to the width of the screen and wrapping it appropriately.
SOMEtimes, the double-tap leads to the tiny version again, but if you double-tap once more, then it goes back up to the large font for text (which exceeded the boundaries you were at when you first double-tapped) but now adjusts the screen-wrap. It's called "re-flowing" the text and when it's done for a nicely large font, it is very nifty.
I explain this more at a blog article I wrote -- and some of the tips work for both the KTouch and the KFire.
http://kindleworld.blogspot.com/2011/12/kindle-tips-for-kindle-touch-and-kindle.html
- Shortcut: http://bit.ly/kwt1205
- Andrys '
For considerably more detail, including other steps to take in Settings to make this work more reliably, do see the longer TIPS article.
Reminder: With both these units, but especially the Kindle Fire, a barely perceptible, very light press or tap will be more likely to activate touchscreen responses.
Added note to new Kindlers: Besides monitoring the Free Kindle Books guide with prepared search links to free Kindle books in more organized, smaller subsets:
be sure to check each day for Amazon's Kindle Daily Deal, which changes at midnight each day. Unfortunately the Daily Deal is mostly U.S. for now.
Kindle Touch 3G Kindle Touch WiFi Kindle Basic (UK: KBasic) Kindle Fire
Kindle Keybd 3G (UK: Kindle Keybd 3G) K3 Special Offers K3-3G Special Offers DX
Check often: Temporarily-free recently published ones
Guide to finding Free Kindle books and Sources. Top 100 free bestsellers. Liked-books under $1
UK-Only: recently published free books, bestsellers, or £5 Max ones
Also, UK customers should see the UK store's Top 100 free bestsellers.
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Andrys,
ReplyDeleteThis tip has made web browsing much more palatable on the Fire now. I'm a Kindle blog subscriber, and somehow missed this in the previous post. THANK YOU for bringing it up again! Now, If I could just get magazines to be more readable as part of their page view I'd be a happy guy.
Scott
Frosty57,
ReplyDeleteThanks for letting me know it did help! The reason you missed it in the original blog article is that I go on for too long, about too many aspects in one entry, and this fatigues readers, so I should write shorter pieces.
The Android feature is really nice, and I saw a youtube video showing an Android phone (Samsung Galaxy S2) re-flowing the text while the iPhone 4S didn't, in the example they showed.
I'm afraid the implementation of The New Yorker has the problem you describe. I've been dismayed that the two magazines I've tried haven't allowed pinch-zoom OR landscape when we want; they're both very static, and the font is too small, but especially in The New Yorker which, in print form, is already too crowded and using a thin font -- so having it in 7" format is just odd. Zoom-in is essential there, but they don't use it. I do think they'll have to do something about it.