The Kindle Fire Reader Is Ready for You!

Kindle Fire Reader

You just got your new Kindle Fire Reader and naturally you will either read a book or buy one. You'll have so many selections and one author cover it exceptionally well. Read further

Today I purchased the new Kindle Fire editions of both V for Vendetta and Sandman, Vol.1. I've been anxious to see how the new KF8 format delivers when it comes to complex graphic novels, since my current project relies entirely on its ability to render full screen color images with overlaid text effectively if it's to be successful in the Kindle format.
At left is a shot of a full panel of Sandman in the Kindle Fire's native reader. Colors are clear and vivid as expected, but the 7" screen presents text that is much too small to read. The problem is exacerbated by the fact that both pinch and zoom and horizontal orientation have inexplicably been turned off for both the titles I downloaded, so that the only way to enlarge the text is via KF8's version of Panel View. This renders graphic novels much the same way the Fire handles magazines, which is to say not well. Pinch and zoom has reached the point of being virtually synonymous with "touchscreen," so that its absence here is truly perplexing. In addition, pages load at annoying slow speeds in the Kindle Fire's reader, so that I found myself constantly swiping twice to turn a page, thinking it hadn't registered my first motion.
A further peculiarity is that the Kindle reader's guided panel view (see at right) only zooms each panel by a percentage of the original (roughly 150% or so), rather than expanding to fill the available screen from edge to edge like all the current comic apps do (including Comixology's Kindle Fire app, which I'll get to in a minute). And as you can see it does so over a dimmed out view of the full page image. I can see artistic reasons for doing this, the main one being controlled and consistent resizing of the artwork: smaller panels zoomed to full screen width can pixelate and become fuzzy with extreme expansion. And this points out the other major reason for restricting zoom, which is that it allows the use of smaller, more compressed images in what is already an extremely large file for an ebook even at these smaller image sizes (Vendetta is 87.8 Mb and Sandman 79.4).

Panel View is accessed and exited via double tapping as normal, and as usual while in the guided panel view swiping moves the zoomed-in image sequentially from one pane to the next, while swiping in full page view moves from one page to the next, albeit very slowly here. There is no menu function for turning Panel View on and off as in other apps (although it isn't needed either), but more importantly, the context menu is exactly the same as that in any other book read on the Kindle Fire, except that both the search and font resizing/typeface functions are inactive here: only the "Go To" links are available, though not surprisingly the table of contents link is grayed out for both of these books.
In Comixology - and every other comic app I have installed on my iPad 2, including Marvel, DC, and Dark Horse - there are additional menu features available for their graphic novels that the Kindle reader doesn't have, such as choices for page transitions, letterboxing (blacking out the white space at the top and bottom), and showing full pages on entering and/or exiting a new or completed page, on top of which there is built in metadata and in-app storefronts and content management. You can also generally browse through a comic in grid view (though not always), seeing an overview of the page sequence in thumbnail form, a function which serves as the graphic novel equivalent of a table of contents.
Somewhat surprisingly, given the Kindle reader's shortcomings mentioned above, the Comixology app on the Kindle Fire functions exactly the same as it does on the iPad, with the ability to pinch-and-zoom any page or panel, as well as rotating the device orientation to auto-zoom the individual panels, and including all the context menu options. As seen in the image below, the currently selected panel automatically expands to fill the available space. And more importantly, it does all this with absolutely smooth and seamless transitions regardless of the level of zoom, showing that the Kindle reader's quirks are not a shortcoming of the device hardware but a flaw in the Kindle reader software and/or format code itself.
Of course, an app is an entirely different creature than an ebook reader, which by its very nature is a much more simplified affair, designed (until now) primarily to accommodate the most basic requirements of text-based files, whereas apps can be as complex as its programmers need it to be (and their creativity and budget allows). Whoever devised the guided panel view was in my mind a deviously clever genius, and I take my hat off to them and hope they somehow find their way into a job in ebook formatting and code development.
Meanwhile, the Kindle reader app for the Fire tablet is at least a step in the right direction, and no small one at that. Although it's clunky and awkward like an old Ford Model T when set beside the sleek and regal Speedster that is the modern comics app, it's still a good beginning. While e-reader screens have finally reached the point where full color illustrated books look good - and often even stunning - the reader software and format code have got a long way to go yet to catch up with the cutting edge. With any luck the capability is there in the new KF8 and ePub3 specs and only needs the proper implementation to bring out. But only time will tell.
Still, that being said, even a PDF viewed in the Kindle Fire's reader loads in lightning fast when compared to the KF8 comics I just bought. On top of which they also allow for both orientation and zoom, as you can see from these two images of the Ring Saga pdf test file that I sideloaded into the Kindle Fire's document folder. Viewing a page in vertical orientation shows the full page by default, whereas rotating horizontally auto-zooms the page to fit the screen width, allowing for scrolling down the page and easier reading of the embedded text at a larger size. Unfortunately, of course, none of more advanced features found in the comic apps are available when viewing PDFs, nor are any of the standard text functions active, such as highlighting, built-in dictionaries, and the like, which is a common failing of this format.
This is hardly an ideal situation for those of us attempting to create full color content. While the technology is finally beginning to reach the realm of possibility, we're not there yet. Still, it's a start. Even with its limitations, this is a major advance for the Kindle reader, from black and white text with grayscale images only weeks ago to full color guided view graphic novels today (albeit clunky ones). Bold steps are being taken, and a lot of brilliant minds are hard at work, focused on this very problem. Another two years down the road and this will all be academic, I suppose. But for now it's really a major pain in my posterior.

There are so many apps that you can choose and go through. So take your time and look deeply into the apps. There are a couple of books for your Kindle Fire Reader to enjoy. Which will be the first choice?