Kindle firmware 5.8.7 (11/30/2016)

[tomsem]

If only it had Bold Comic Sans.

[Barty]

^^^ you can blame the publishers for a lot of things. You can't blame them for what fonts or font control features Amazon chooses to put on their own readers.

Current trend in UI design is to use thin fonts, no separation lines, low contrast. Look at all the web sites that use gray text on white background. Because black text is too harsh or something. Never mind that most computer monitors are crappy lcds with poor contrast so the text is already gray to begin with. Designers (or the people who pay them) seem to assume everybody has 25 year old 20/20 eyes and large, hi res, good quality monitors they themselves use.

There's also the tendency to put "accessibility features" in a category by itself rather than designing UI that suits a continuum of needs. You either have perfect eyesight or you're legally blind. I fall in between and it frustrates me to no end dealing with modern GUI.

Anyway this is why I jailbreak. So I don't have to embed a font in every book, I can have multiple alternative fonts, and I can tweak and change the fonts any time I like. I don't have to care what fonts Amazon gives me. I can even change the UI font, too. If I couldn't jailbreak, I'd probably just buy a kobo.

Originally Posted by Barty

^^^ you can blame the publishers for a lot of things. You can't blame them for what fonts or font control features Amazon chooses to put on their own readers.

Current trend in UI design is to use thin fonts, no separation lines, low contrast. Look at all the web sites that use gray text on white background. Because black text is too harsh or something. Never mind that most computer monitors are crappy lcds with poor contrast so the text is already gray to begin with. Designers (or the people who pay them) seem to assume everybody has 25 year old 20/20 eyes and large, hi res, good quality monitors they themselves use.

There's also the tendency to put "accessibility features" in a category by itself rather than designing UI that suits a continuum of needs. You either have perfect eyesight or you're legally blind. I fall in between and it frustrates me to no end dealing with modern GUI.

Anyway this is why I jailbreak. So I don't have to embed a font in every book, I can have multiple alternative fonts, and I can tweak and change the fonts any time I like. I don't have to care what fonts Amazon gives me. I can even change the UI font, too. If I couldn't jailbreak, I'd probably just buy a kobo.

Current UI trends are not applicable to devices designed for reading text, unless the designers are morons! While jailbreaking or deDRMing and placing a custom font inside an ebook is always an option, I have no desire to do either one. Nor should I have to. When you deDRM and add your own fonts then Amazon treats the ebook, even one you bought from them, as a personal doc and thus will not enable all the Whispersync functionality, and I like that functionality. So my solution is to read on a device that was better designed, my iPhone, iPad, or a high resolution tablet, and let my Voyage collect dust on a shelf.

[barryem]

I read mostly on my Voyage and a lot on my phone using Moon+ and that means that for the most part Whispersync doesn't work for me anyway. I've been just manually syncing most of the time and the more I do it the easier it gets. In fact when I first started doing it it was fairly easy. Now it's almost trivial.

Whispersync is a very nice feature when you can use it but it locks you in and becomes a bad habit if you let it.

When I end a reading session I make it a point to remember some short phrase on the page I'm on, usually near the top. It can be almost anything. Then if I switch devices I do a text search for that phrase. Usually there'll be 2 or 3 occurrences and each is shown with enough context I can go right to it. It's as simple as that. On my current page on my current book I'd search on "Luis was angry". There was only one occurance in this case. I just did it. Every now and then there'll be 6 or 7 instances of that phrase and a glance always takes me to the right one.

Most of the time that entire process is faster than waiting on Whispersync. It takes more effort and more thought but not more time.

Also, I try to stretch my sessions to the end of the chapter and then all I have to remember is the chapter number.

Last night I read on my Fire phone and my Voyage and they do sync nicely but I found myself searching instead of waiting. It's just a habit now.

Barry

[badgoodDeb]

I use location numbers for that, though I don't change devices very often these days.

[tkavan]

My Paperwhite has firmware 5.8.5.0.2. I tried to update to the latest version, but the option "Update Your Kindle" is greyed out. Does this mean the latest update (5.8.7?) is not for the PW?

[Hollow Man]

Originally Posted by tkavan

My Paperwhite has firmware 5.8.5.0.2. I tried to update to the latest version, but the option "Update Your Kindle" is greyed out. Does this mean the latest update (5.8.7?) is not for the PW?

Both the 6th and 7th generation Paperwhites support 5.8.7. My Oasis wasn't automatically updating (I've never understood how Amazon pushes these things out, and why some people get them earlier than others), so I downloaded it and manually installed it. You can do that here:

https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/custo...deId=200529680

-HM

[tkavan]

Originally Posted by Hollow Man

Both the 6th and 7th generation Paperwhites support 5.8.7. My Oasis wasn't automatically updating (I've never understood how Amazon pushes these things out, and why some people get them earlier than others), so I downloaded it and manually installed it. You can do that here:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/custo...deId=200529680 -HM

Thanks HM. I did what you said and it all worked smoothly.

[KimberlyFDR]

Originally Posted by tkavan

Thanks HM. I did what you said and it all worked smoothly.

I had to do a manual update yesterday, too (first time since I bought my Paperwhite) and it went smoothly. I wonder why the update got delayed for some of us, or if anyone did actually get an automatic update.

[AnemicOak]

Originally Posted by KimberlyFDR

I wonder why the update got delayed for some of us, or if anyone did actually get an automatic update.

The over the air updates can take weeks to reach all users as they push it out in phases (or at least they have in the past).

[evdberg]

Can I update directly from 5.7.4 to the latest, or do I need a version in-between?

[NullNix]

Much of the time when I try to search for something the search pane vanishes again within a second, and you have to race it to type something, anything, before it *sometimes* deigns to remain visible. This bug has been present since 5.8.2.

How long does it take Amazon to fix simple brazenly obvious incredibly frustrating bugs that affect even the lightest of users? Ages, it seems...

[JSWolf]

Originally Posted by Barty

^^^ you can blame the publishers for a lot of things. You can't blame them for what fonts or font control features Amazon chooses to put on their own readers.

Current trend in UI design is to use thin fonts, no separation lines, low contrast. Look at all the web sites that use gray text on white background. Because black text is too harsh or something. Never mind that most computer monitors are crappy lcds with poor contrast so the text is already gray to begin with. Designers (or the people who pay them) seem to assume everybody has 25 year old 20/20 eyes and large, hi res, good quality monitors they themselves use.

There's also the tendency to put "accessibility features" in a category by itself rather than designing UI that suits a continuum of needs. You either have perfect eyesight or you're legally blind. I fall in between and it frustrates me to no end dealing with modern GUI.

Anyway this is why I jailbreak. So I don't have to embed a font in every book, I can have multiple alternative fonts, and I can tweak and change the fonts any time I like. I don't have to care what fonts Amazon gives me. I can even change the UI font, too. If I couldn't jailbreak, I'd probably just buy a kobo.

The problem is that eInk and LCD are too different. A font that works well on eInk can be too dark on LCD. A font that works well on LCD can be too light for eInk. So what's the solution to the problem when a font is needed to be embedded?

[jhowell]

Originally Posted by evdberg

Can I update directly from 5.7.4 to the latest, or do I need a version in-between?

You can update to the latest version from any of the older 5.x versions.

(Some of the oldest Kindle models used incremental firmware updates and required each to be installed in turn. That is no longer the case for newer models.)

[tkavan]

Originally Posted by NullNix

Much of the time when I try to search for something the search pane vanishes again within a second, and you have to race it to type something, anything, before it *sometimes* deigns to remain visible. This bug has been present since 5.8.2.

How long does it take Amazon to fix simple brazenly obvious incredibly frustrating bugs that affect even the lightest of users? Ages, it seems...

FWIW that doesn't happen on my Paperwhite (5.8.7). I left the search window open for 15-20 seconds and it just stayed there.