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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?
Since when is a large corporation customer-centric? It's stockholder-centric, silly!
The current trend towards very low contrast, low weight fonts by many websites and devices is most disturbing. One has to wonder why webmasters are so ashamed of their content that they want to make it so difficult for people to read it.
e-ink is hugely expensive. This saves them a ton of money. but don't turn it on negative contrast or you'll be replacing toner cartridges like mad.
Seriously why is e-paper so expensive. even on placed like alibaba you can't buy e-paper for less than the cost of a kindle itself. You could probably buy used kindles just to re-sell the e-paper screens and turn a profit.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Hi! Welcome to the internet. I see you're new here. So let me give you some advice: Amazon eats babies. With puppy sauce. Avoid them at all costs.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
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.
Designers tend to be font geeks. If you have ever worked with designers they're normally pretty sure they know what is better for you than you do.
At least the Helvetica Syndrome is far better than the Helvetica Scenario.
It's times like this I wish I had a friend named 'The Professor'.
When I left feedback complaining about it I got an email from support saying they canceled my prime subscription (without asking me).
You're lucky they didn't cancel your Tesla order too!
Everybody knows that thinner fonts weigh less than thicker fonts. While you're losing readability, you're benefiting from having a lighter device.
Since Day 1 of the E-Ink Kindles, Amazon has been indignantly screwing the pooch on fonts. It is hard to understand why this is still the case. Bookerly is not a good font; there is no actual science behind the claims made in their marketing about it. There's just no good size to select, either.
At least they finally started allowing you to ignore the publisher-preferred font in recent years. Some books published that way were illegible and it's obvious that Amazon employees do not use their own products.
Kriston
I think we all see that there's a big push toward The New Shiny for implementing Web UIs, and a push toward hiring young frontier-chasers in place of older developers and designers who are perhaps more attached to older, less cutting-edge technologies.
Well, surprise -- younger people IN GENERAL have an easier time focusing on close targets, perceiving low-contrast images, and dealing with generally lower light levels.
Now, most of the designers I've worked with at least pay lip service to accessibility, universal design, and maybe even special-needs users. But when they're showing mockups to decision-makers, they still seem to push for what's trendy -- and, hey, the twenty- and thirty-somethings in the room have no trouble reading it, and if the forty- and fifty-somethings do, they sure aren't going to call further attention to their "differently youthful" status by complaining about it.
As a result, we see today's visual design. If we squint enough.
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.
All the e-readers I've used allow you to choose a different font as well. I have not used a Kindle but it probably has that option somewhere.
So does Kindle. What he's bitching about is that the Kindle supplied font he was using as a workaround for his having bad eyes is no longer usable as a workaround, because the update included a slightly different version of the font, such that it no longer appears to be bolded, as it did previously.
He doesn't want to up the point size on the font, which the Kindle would allow, and which also work around the problem. Presumably, this is an "I'm not old, dammit!" reaction to the use of the larger point size as a workaround.
He doesn't want to use the publisher font (also an option), because the publisher (presumably) picked a font that *also* does not work around his eye problems, either.
Or none of these things, and he's just one of those people who are pissy about wanting to side-load custom fonts, and apply them to his entire library, and this is his wedge issue to allow him to ride that particular hobby horse.
Or not even that, he's just being pissy about the fact modern technology is moving away from accessibility in many ways, and he's using this as a wedge issue because he wants to be able to intermediate presentation to do things like automatically text-to-speech.
Because if he *REALLY* cared about the font, it's a completely work-aroundable problem. All you have to do is DRM-strip the book in question, replace the font in the book image with whatever font you want (which makes it a "publisher font", as far as the Kindle knows), and then set the device to use the "publisher font", and presto, you have whatever damn font you want, without Amazon needing to allow side-loading of pirated fonts. Which is apparently something they are contractually prohibited from doing.
In point of fact, there are many blogs that discuss how to perform the procedure on individual books, such that they are using whatever font you want them to use. I'm partial to this one, since it demonstrates the control panel image on the Kindle as part of the setup process for doing the conversion, and the particular image they used shows that the Helvetica font on the device appears to be bolded, compared to all the other available font selections.
Blog demonstrating replacing the font used by a book on a Kindle:
http://blog.the-ebook-reader.c...