Thoughts on Page Display themes feature

[tomsem]

I was initially dubious about the new Themes feature, mostly because the UI change pushed XRay and Aa (and Notes? Cannot remember) off of the toolbar, so it takes more taps to get to these.

However, I’m warming up to it:

• easy to set up different themes for Portrait and Landscape and switch orientation more quickly (Prior to this, I would want to change one or two page display settings along with Orientation, so switching orientations was so cumbersome I rarely did it)
• multiple users of same device can switch to their preferred page display settings quickly (not my use case)
• different fonts may need different size/line spacing etc. so that’s also easier to set up and switch

A few refinements I’d like to see:

• I’d really like to be able to Lock or Pin page display settings on a per-book basis. So maybe next to the ‘Aa PAGE DISPLAY v’ control, there could be a little ‘padlock’ icon that you tap to enable the lock, ensuring that that book will look the same for subsequent reading sessions on that device. As long as the lock is set, you can modify the current settings or choose another theme without affecting appearance of any other book: settings become ‘local’ to that book. Unlocking reverts to using global page display settings. Books without a locked theme would just use the last theme that is set.
• in the Themes panel, one of the options in the menu for the named themes should be ‘Details’, which would bring up a dialog enumerating what page display settings it has, e.g. Font, Page, Reading options so you don’t have to actually select the theme and navigate to each panel to find out what it does.
• there seems to be no way to erase or discard a Custom (unnamed) theme, apart from saving it, giving it a name, exiting Font & Page Settings, selecting a different theme, going back into Font & Page Settings/THEMES, and then deleting it (you cannot delete the currently selected theme) — VERY cumbersome workaround to clear this bit of Clutter in the theme selector. (Note that accidentally or intentionally changing text size with pinch gesture will silently create a Custom theme and that will become the selected theme.) Once a Custom theme exists, a message in the THEMES panel offers to ‘Save your current settings to a new theme’ even when a named theme is selected — which is inaccurate, as the ‘current’ settings are derived from the named theme, not the Custom theme that is not selected. So the message is a little confusing, and should be changed, maybe to ‘save your Custom settings’. I think the cleanest way to fix the clutter issue would be to put up a dialog when switching from Custom to a named theme, offering to Cancel (the theme switch), Save (Custom settings as named theme and select it), or Discard (Custom settings and switch).

Anyway, I’m planning to send some suggestions to kindle-feedback about this.

Meanwhile need to add some custom fonts to my new PW4. How many fonts can you fit in 32GB?

[Futuregrace]

I’d love to see invert text as an option in themes so I could have a day reading theme and a night reading theme

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by Futuregrace

I’d love to see invert text as an option in themes so I could have a day reading theme and a night reading theme

Yes, that would be nice (and something one might expect given how it works on computers and mobile devices). However the option is sequestered away in
Accessibility, and is only available on 9th and 10th generation Kindles (2 models out of the 6 still getting software updates), I assume because it is essentially a hardware-enabled feature.

I would use it more but not sure I can get used to the frequent white flashes as UI refreshes.

[Shad Plante]

Personally, I don't think the themes button needs to be as wide as it is. They could narrow it up and have room to put X-Ray back on the toolbar.

[NiLuJe]

In theory (I don't have an Oasis 2 or a PW4 to confirm how it actually behaves and how much this actually helps if it does), there's hardware & software support for tweaking the frontlight when nightmode is enabled, supposedly especially during flashes (that's in addition to the nightmode-specific waveform).

(i.e., they really tried to make it as much non-terrible as they could, given the technological constraints).

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by Shad Plante

Personally, I don't think the themes button needs to be as wide as it is. They could narrow it up and have room to put X-Ray back on the toolbar.

It has to do with localization: German and Russian, for example, have longer words that need to fit there.

[Quoth]

I like the new Themes feature. I think X-ray is a marketing gimmick.
I'm not fussed on inverted. I hated that in old B&W / green / amber DOS CRT days and hate "dark" themes on GUIs. I also edit Console windows to be dark text on pale backgrounds (sepia + dark brown if white and black is too harsh). The Aldiko app on Android for eReading does a nice sepia tint background. Obviously impossible on eInk without RGB or orange LEDs frontlight.
Also prefer Whiteboards to Blackboards. I don't find it any help in dimmer conditions.
The only thing I ever saw with inverse that I found easier was the BBC PPM (white needle and digits, black background). It used very bold text.

[Paperbackstash]

I like the new Theme feature as well but do wish we could also have the one touch screen options on reading (like reading options, which for some reason randomly shuts off on both of my paperwhites when I'm in the middle of reading). I haven't used X-Ray much.

[tomsem]

Originally Posted by FrustratedReader

I'm not fussed on inverted. I hated that in old B&W / green / amber DOS CRT days and hate "dark" themes on GUIs. I also edit Console windows to be dark text on pale backgrounds (sepia + dark brown if white and black is too harsh). The Aldiko app on Android for eReading does a nice sepia tint background. Obviously impossible on eInk without RGB or orange LEDs frontlight.
Also prefer Whiteboards to Blackboards. I don't find it any help in dimmer conditions.

I was trying it in dark conditions last night: it is not any help (and is far from being Black), but by the same token neither do I find standard ‘white’ background very pleasant in those conditions. I need at least some ambient light to read on Kindles comfortably.

By contrast, white on black theme in the Kindle app on my iPhone XS (OLED) is great in the dark. Of course that is a very pricey reading device...