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Amazon's Thin Helvetica Syndrome: Font Anorexia vs. Kindle Readability (teleread.com)
David Rothman writes: The Thin Helvetica Syndrome arises from the latest Kindle upgrade and has made e-books less readable for some. In the past, e-book-lovers who needed more perceived-contrast between text and background could find at least partial relief in Helvetica because the font was heavy by Kindle standards. But now some users complain that the 5.7.2 upgrade actually made Helvetica thinner. Of course, the real cure would be an all-text bold option for people who need it, or even a way to adjust font weight, a feature of Kobo devices. But Amazon stubbornly keeps ignoring user pleas even though the cost of adding either feature would be minimal. Isn't this supposed to be a customer-centric company?
Mine is 5 years old and never required an update - I love the font - and the whole device. I occasionally buy from the Amazon store, so that still works. If they try to enforce an update I'll rely on other sources of book files.
Well, sure .. that's likely. Probable I'd even say ... with the caveat they specifically selected the one which I'd hate the most. ;-)
It just boggles the mind, it used to present as a nice, neat table, which conveyed all information succinctly in one screen, in a way not unlike how an accountant would present it.
Now I have to look all over the place scroll, and click twice as many things, and search among a bunch of clutter and pastel colors. Like that makes sense or adds to the usefulness.
Over 20 years ago a friend said HTML had set back user interface design by 20 years ... the astounding thing is, every few years it keeps making them worse.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
My wife got a Kindle a few years ago and liked it but still found it hard to read.
At one point I saw her reading something in Comic Sans and I thought it was odd and unrelated.
Somewhat later she found about about dyslexie font and OpenDyslexic font and started using them on various devices.
I found out you could manually import fonts onto the kindle paperwhite so we ordered one.
Amazon patched all the Kindles to block importing fonts and limit you to the preloaded fonts.
There is a workaround involving downloading free ebooks and converting them in such a way that you embed the font but it isn't an option for the vast majority of what she would like to read on the Kindle.
We then sold our Kindles and she just reads on a laptop instead.
To add to the fun it isn't just Amazon, I haven't found a way to add the dyslexie/opendislexic font to a non rooted android phone. How hard would it be for device manufacturers to just add a simple font import or heaven forbid actually include more fonts in the base configuration?
As is phones/phablets/tablets are more common than Kindles and now big enough/cheap enough to make the Kindle less important but it's just moved my concern about this issue from Amazon to Android.
When the Kindle Touch was replaced by newer Kindle e-readers, many were unhappy because all audio features and functionality were removed. That is one reason that I have not replaced my Kindle Touch with a newer model. Another reason is that the internal memory was dropped fro 4GB to 2GB. I see that they increased the memory back to 4GB on current devices, but they refuse to add a slot for a micro-SDHC card.
It is my belief that features should never be taken away when a new version or model of a device is produced. Its ok to ad new features, but not to take features away. Especially features that owners of the device like and use.
BTW, Amazon could easily have produced a slightly modified Kindle Keyboard that would have been very useful to visually impaired users, but chose not to. All it would have taken was extending the voice prompts that the device already had to include functions that would allow visually impaired users to use the kindle store or side-load ebooks and organize them without assistance from a sighted person.
I have two Kindle Touches, both with new batteries, so I am set for some time to come. I bought the first one new, because of it being reviewed as having the most readable screen at that time. This was before I had cataract surgery. I bought the second used on eBay. No problems with either one. If I did need to replace them, I would probably buy another used Touch, there are plenty of them available on eBay.
Oh, and just for information, you CAN control the fonts and font sizes in most web browsers.