Kindle's Sort Of "Zoom" Feature

[wallcraft]

I can't find a zoomable image in "The Future of the Internet" or "Big People and Little People of Other Lands" on the Kindle. Which images (chapter or figure title) in these ebooks zoom on the Kindle? I was able to zoom the TOPAZ "Basic Relativity".

[daffy4u]

I'm sorry, I misunderstood, that's what I get for trying to multi-task too many tasks. My reading comprehension went out the window. I only tried them on MobiPocket Reader. If they didn't work on the Kindle for you, I'm sure they wouldn't for me.

I don't know if you emailed them for Amazon's conversion. I'll try that and see if it makes a difference. I'll get back to you.

[daffy4u]

Nope. Can't get the images in either book to zoom even after being Kindle-ized. I'm going to poke around Amazon's DTP forum and see if I can find any information.

[HarryT]

AFAIK, you only get the zoom option in image mode (on the Windows Mobi reader, that is) if the displayed image has been scaled down to fit the display page. ie, if you start out with a large, high-resolution image. It's especially handy for things like maps.

[huari]

I thought the 'new' Zoom feature would be great when some newer programming books came out and coincided with the announcement of O'Reilly's experiment with other eBook formats.

Unfortunately I found out that it depends on the publisher. Attached is a screenshot from an Apress book trying to show a dialog window, but the Kindle's resolution is not up to snuff.

Other books have more complex images/tables and no Zoom function; I can't understand why they are still listed Kindle.

I now resort to checking the Search Inside feature of the print version or borrowing a prospective purchase from the Public Library so I can check tables and other images that maybe distorted on the Kindle.

2009 looks to see eInk coming to the dailies in a big way and with that more exposure to the late adopting masses.

Imagine a day when paper is secondary and old books once Kindle converted by less diligent publishers have to be checked against GoogleBooks or paper archives for the correct proof
It's like going back to microfiche to do the school research paper in the connected info age.

Publishers lower quality, rush to press and let the crowd fix it.

The Amazon Kindle team is in dire need of an errata forum so users can post corrections and we can get better quality books.

or wait for Kindle 2.0

[dre95060]

Originally Posted by huari

Unfortunately I found out that it depends on the publisher. Attached is a screenshot from an Apress book trying to show a dialog window, but the Kindle's resolution is not up to snuff.

Yes, this is exactly what I am talking about. It sucks.

It seems to me that the software fix is easy (Lab126, are you listening?). Assuming the hi-res image is baked into the ebook in the first place, instead of blowing it up to screen size, add the option of blowing it up to 1:1 pixel-to-pixel size and add a pan feature. The pan feature doesn't have to be that sophisticated.

If we can get Igor to figure out how to get third-party Java apps to run, we could hack the reader and fix this! (Igor, have you cracked this yet? )

Dave E

[daffy4u]

The only thing I could find on the Amazon DTP forum that even remotely hinted at this feature was this [their DTP forum is very weak, I feel bad for self-publishing authors]:

http://forums.digitaltextplatform.co...1&categoryID=3

The 'Preview' application does not convert images for display accurately. This means that it will show larger images to be rotated or re-sized even if they aren't going to be changed in the final Kindle content. This is a known issue with the Preview. As long as your images conform to the rules above, they will remain unchanged as Kindle Editions.

[wallcraft]

Originally Posted by huari

Attached is a screenshot from an Apress book trying to show a dialog window, but the Kindle's resolution is not up to snuff.

Other books have more complex images/tables and no Zoom function; I can't understand why they are still listed Kindle

A Kindle book can either be in MOBI (AZW) or TOPAZ (AZW1) format. The MOBI format supports an image (zoom) mode on most device types, but not on the Kindle. TOPAZ probably always has zoom for images, but some publishers don't seem to be using to its full potential. In this case, the problem is at least in part with the basic image quality.

TOPAZ allows embedded fonts, but does not seem to have monospaced font support. At least, in this case all the computer commands are presented as images. See the enclosed screenshots. The "Basic Relativity" ebook also uses images for equations, but that is more common than using them for monospaced text.

[wallcraft]

Originally Posted by dre95060

Assuming the hi-res image is baked into the ebook in the first place, instead of blowing it up to screen size, add the option of blowing it up to 1:1 pixel-to-pixel size and add a pan feature.

It isn't clear that there is a high res image in the ebook. We can't tell because they are in the obscure TOPAZ format. On almost every device except the Kindle, a MOBI file can associate a high res. image with the one normally displayed (web browsers do this all the time too). Note that it does not even need to be the same image. It could be a zoom of just part of the image for example. This option may already be available for TOPAZ, which would put the blame for lack of optimization mostly on the publisher. Even without this capability, it should be possible for publishers to implement a "zoom half the image" capability by actually displaying the original image in two halves. This would allow zoom to select the top or bottom of the image for zooming.

See the attached screenshots, from Apress's Beginning Ruby, which show that the zoom can be in portrait mode and also that the image quality is very much part of the problem.

[daffy4u]

Well, Amazon's DTP says the feature is not supported through their software.

http://forums.digitaltextplatform.co...&tstart=0#6527

[wallcraft]

Originally Posted by daffy4u

Well, Amazon's DTP says the feature is not supported through their software.

This probably means that DTP only produces AZW (MOBI) ebooks. All the images were zoomable in the very small sample of AZW1 (TOPAZ) ebooks with images I looked at. So I think this is a standard feature of TOPAZ ebooks (just as image mode is a standard feature of MOBI ebooks on most other platforms).

[daffy4u]

So is there some Topaz Creator software similar to MobiPocket Creator or is it all hand coding?

[randomblink]

Does anyone have access to an unpacker? Someway to take a purchased, legit mobi book and return it to it's HTML format? That sounds like it would be the key...
Anyone?