How does the panel view mode of the Kindle Paperwhite work?

[Shadowlord]

How does this so called panel view mode of the Kindle Paperwhite actually work? Panel view mode allows to read comics panel by panel.
Does it only work with specially prepared comics/manga i.e. bought from the Kindle store or does this also work with sideloaded ones?

I guess it won‘t work, because the Kindle Paperwhite would have to detect the single panels of a comic on its own. Or does this work?
If it does not work, is there an easy to use tool to create your own panel view enabled comics or is this not possible?

[7hir7een]

Originally Posted by Shadowlord

How does this so called panel view mode of the Kindle Paperwhite actually work? Panel view mode allows to read comics panel by panel.
Does it only work with specially prepared comics/manga i.e. bought from the Kindle store or does this also work with sideloaded ones?

I guess it won‘t work, because the Kindle Paperwhite would have to detect the single panels of a comic on its own. Or does this work?
If it does not work, is there an easy to use tool to create your own panel view enabled comics or is this not possible?

I can't speak to comics bought from the Kindle store, but the comics I sideloaded after processing using the methods listed in this thread at least have some panel view support. Official comics/manga may differ from what I describe.

First off, the comic will show up fullscreen on the Paperwhite, which is a treat in and of itself. I can almost always read the comic without zooming in due to the nice resolution.

Then when I double-tap, the screen will fill with the top left fourth. You touch to turn the page, and image will pan to fill the screen with the top right fourth, then the bottom left, bottom right. It works well for me, but obviously your experience may differ. You can double-tap again to get out of panel view if you'd like. I'm not sure how it works with comics of a different resolution, but it's likely similar.

Anyway, I'm not sure if comics/manga have "custom" panel configurations. It may just use this general method, or they may actually be more customized.

ETA: Also if you tap in a region of the screen that isn't the top left, it'll zoom in to the general area of where you tapped.

[tomsem]

Comics that use panel view from Amazon configure panels individually in the KF8 file itself. What 7hir7een describes is a 'one size fits all approach' as it is not in general easy for a script to autodetect panel boundaries in order to define the boundaries appropriately.

On the Paperwhite, in panel view, each panel is zoomed to fit the screen (this comes with some degree of scaling artifacts as the panel resolution is not going to be 1024x758 very often). You can use 'spread' gesture directly to zoom in and then pan around in either page view or panel view (unlike the behavior on my Kindle Fire or the Android or iOS apps, which don't let you zoom).

Paperwhite also differs from Kindle Keyboard's implementation, which lets you set a 'zoom level' for panel view. So it can be 100/150/200% resolution, or fit-to-screen. I haven't seen K4's implementation (probably similar to KK's), and Kindle Touch doesn't support it yet.

[Shadowlord]

Thanks to both of you!

So the panel view mode won’t work with sideloaded comics/manga and you have to use the standard zoom mode as described by 7hir7een.
While this might be good enough for comics, I think it could be quite awkward for manga since you have to read them starting at the top right fourth of a page and not the top left.

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by Shadowlord

Thanks to both of you!

So the panel view mode won’t work with sideloaded comics/manga and you have to use the standard zoom mode as described by 7hir7een.
While this might be good enough for comics, I think it could be quite awkward for manga since you have to read them starting at the top right fourth of a page and not the top left.

I'm sure one could change the script to put the panels in the correct order, if it doesn't have that option already.