Quick Superficial Overview
of My Kindle Fire HDs Presentation of The Best American Comics 2013
i’ve been collecting (
Listing ) all The little problems on my Kindle Fire HD that i find, & This
Listing has become so long, with so much additional commentary, that it’s
gotten completely away from me. ( ! )
Even now; i am very Reticent
to even touch any of Those criticisms because they are so lengthy; While what
really brought me to my Rants Folder this morning was my Recent Frustration
with:
The Best American Comics 2013
/ Jeff Smith - Editor
i have loved this Series
for many years, But this Issue that i’m Reading for my Fire HD has many, many
short-comings !
The Easiest Way to Consider
these Annoyances is to Compare The Book Reader to Zinio’s Magazine Reader.
The Zinio Magazine Reader
offers The Most Elegant Solution to Reading Big Page Magazines on The
Comparatively Tiny Fire HD Screen.
The Zinio Structure allows
for The Most Elementary Touch Screen Functions, Such as; Pinch to Enlarge or
Shrink— Which The Book Reader does Not !
The Best American Comics
Book Exasperates this further by Adding what its Editors may have thought was
being Clever, but Results in just Layers & Layers of Frustration.
When you’re viewing The
Page of a Magazine in Zinio; Each page is Presented exactly as you’d view it in
The Print Versions, & if you want to Examine something in Detail or Read an
Article, All you have to Do is Pinch to Expand The Area that you’d like to See.
This is Supplemented a little by a Double Tap which Blow up The Section under
The Tap, which can then be fine tuned to just The right size & positioning
with subtle finger manipulations. With a Little Practice, this becomes purely
automatic on The Readers Part.
In Full Disclosure; As much
as i Love Zinio; There is a Slight Ambiguity with this Touch System, in that
when you single touch The screen ( sometimes ) The Scrolling Editor comes up
along The Bottom. This is easily remedied, but i would much rather this feature
was more restricted to a specific activation region, such as very near The
bottom of The Screen.
This Scrolling Editor is
Very useful for ‘Flipping’ through The Magazine, as well as an Additional
feature which brings up all The Pages, Side by Side for Examination which is
accessed by a Features Menu.
The Best American Comics
Book has none of these Features. It has only The Sliding Button along The
Bottom which provides No Real Ability to Scan The Book in a ‘Flipping’ Manner.
It doesn’t even have a
Table of Contents which is accessible from any Page in The Book. ( Some Books
do have this )
It doesn’t have The
Synthetic Reader Either.
One Less Significant
Annoyance is that The Pages are Presented with a Beige Side Margin which makes
The pages look smaller.
With Zinio; These Side
Margins are Black, so that The Pages appear to fill The Screen if they are not
proportional to The Dimensions of The Fire HDs Screen.
The Method that The Best
American Comics Reader uses to ally The Reader to Read ‘Fine Print’ is to have
created an Entirely Customized Interface which ‘Pops Up’ Individual Comix Panes
when Double Tapped. Once this has been engaged, you can ‘Flip’ Through The
Panes one after another, as you would Flip individual Pages.
The Problem is though; That
this Method is Very Inconsistent !
i have spent many minutes
wildly tapping on The Screen trying to reproduce an Effect which it just
performed !
The Most Egregious Flaw
though is The Missing Pinch to Enlarge & Shrink ! If it simply included
this One Universal Feature, i would be willing to forgive its many other flaws.
And Worse Perhaps !!! Is
that it DOES Include this Feature for SOME panes, But NOT All of Them !!!
When you do Double Tap for
The Panes that this Works with ( Not All of Them ! ) It Will Only Enlarge a
Section to Fill The Screen Width in Portrait Mode ( It won’t work in Landscape
Mode !!! ) So that This Enlargement is only very marginal for many Panes.
For SOME of The Panes; You
can Double Tap them into an Enlargement Mode that is common for most books,
which Separates The Illustration to A ‘Viewing Pane’ which you can Use The
Pinch to Enlarge & Shrink Feature, But to ‘Return’ to The Book, you have to
Cancel this by Tapping on The Close (x) Button in The Upper Right Hand Corner.
In The Zinio Magazine
Reader; You are Always in The Reader Mode. You can Enlarge & Shrink Pages,
Navigate around them, & then Move on to The Next page while always in this
One Mode.
It annoys me that i have to
‘Open’ an Illustration to View it in Detail in all The Books. And Additionally;
The Illustrations are usually presented in their Smallest Imaginable Size, Like
on Wikipedia. So that to View any of these Illustrations, you have to ‘Open’
them to A Second Viewing Tier, Then Close that to Return to The Reading
Material.
There is something ‘Kind of
Like This’ in The Zinio Magazine Reader, In that for Some Articles in Some
Magazines, you can Enter a ’TEXT’ Mode, which allows you to Read a Lengthy
Article in The Usual Tablet Book like Format. Which is Very Convenient, &
its easy to escape from.
Another Thing that is
Obviously Different about The Zinio & Book Viewing Formats, Is that when
Flipping from one Page in A Zinio Magazine to another Page, You are Sliding
from One Page to The Next, which allows you to see both pages during The Slide,
Separated by a Thin White Line.
When you Flip from One page
in The Best American Comics Book to The Next Page; The First Page will Slide to
The Left, But The Next Page will be Blank for Several moments, then Pop Up.
The Zinio Method
Demonstrates that this Pause isn’t necessary, so that its especially annoying.
Another Grievance with The
Best American Comics Book is that when you Double Tap on A Pane to Enlarge it,
Sometimes The Whole page or Section will Enlarge, & sometimes only The
Speech Bubble will Enlarge, & very often; When The Speech Bubble is
Enlarged, It will Not be Enlarged as The Bubble, but as a Box which Cuts of The
Edges of The Bubble. This may seem like a Trivial Complaint, but If i was The
Editor that Used this Method, i would insist The Whole Bubble was Extracted
& Enlarged. It’s just a Demonstration of Lazy Tablet Reader Editing.
The Definitive Solution
would be to allow Pinch To Enlarge to Work on Every Page !!!
This is very Annoying in
The Introduction, which doesn’t have The Top Menu Bar, Which ALL BOOKS do ! So
that i can’t make The Text Bigger, & in this Native Mode, As Presented, The
Text is Very Small, & won’t even allow me to Switch to Landscape Mode, by
turning The Device over on its side.
That is Just Crazy ( !!! )
?
The Missing Top Menu Bar is
also Crazy.
The Missing Table of
Contents usually featured in This Menu Bar is Also Crazy, Especially
Considering what kind of Book this is ! Finding a Given Comic after leaving it,
is very annoying & Frustrating !
The Nut of it is; Although
this is not The First Graphic Novel that i’ve bought for my Kindle Fire, it
will be The Last.
They have tricked me for
The Last Time.
The Other Two ( ±
) Hawkeye & Some Samplers, Suffer from these Short comings as well.
All Illustrative Works
should Follow The Zinio Method ! ( !!! )
,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,_,.-:*'``'*:-.,
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