REVISED: READING FULL WEB PAGES WITH UNREADABLE TINY FONT ON A 7" SCREENThis is revised from the earlier blog articles on making tiny fonts more readable when doing the web on Kindle Fire and Kindle Touch.
KINDLE TOUCHThe Kindle Touch no longer responds the same way to the Android feature or trick.
With the KTouch, you now simply Double click a page to get the current text to fill the width of the screen but only at a certain font level which is not large enough for my normal needs, though I can read it.
You CAN, though, then use two fingers to Pinch-Zoom the text-size to a desired size, but tnen you'll need to scroll around a bit.
At least, with the Kindle Touch, though, if you are reading a web article (as with a
lead individual feature on a product page or news story) you can choose
Menu and select
Article Mode and get a very readable screen as a result. (You then select
Web Mode to get back into regular web reading mode.)
But, as an example, for the Customer Reviews that follow an Amazon product page description: Since the
Menu-->Article Mode feature pertains only to a lead article and
not to the reviews that follow (and never to a full page), there is no 'Article Mode' for secondary text that gives you the nicely-programmed larger-sized text. Again, you CAN pinch-zoom any text to a desired size (which is considerably better than what we had before).
I can no longer, though, get a desired text size that would be adjusted to the screen width, with the Kindle Touch, via pinch-zooming to a largish font-size and then clicking. Now, it's mainly a
toggle that we can get between tiny and medium-small -- or, we can then use the gradual pinch-zooming to a larger size:
Again -- Double-click to see the full page with tiny text and Double-click again to see a specific column fit to the width of the screen -- but only in a smaller font size, after which you can pinch-zoom to a larger size and scroll around as needed. It just no longer lets you fit a column to the width at a larger font-size you've chosen, which is inconvenient, but at least we can make adjustments. (Sorry for the redundancy, but I just want to be as clear as possible.)
KINDLE FIRE -- A really smooth way to get a larger text-size of our choice adjusted to width of the screen when doing the web I'd written earlier, in detail, on dealing with web pages or with PDFs in which you can see the full pages, which are usually unreadable in that format with screen widths that are considerably smaller than our computer screens.
I'd found that many news-site reviewers don't know about a valuable
Android feature that is crucial to enjoyment of web pages on small devices (this applies very well to Android smartphones too of course), and those just using a device like the Kindle Fire won't tend to know about them either.
While joining in discussions on
Amazon Kindle Forums community where so many Kindle owners hang out to help other owners and get tips in return, I saw the following
question and replied to it more briefly than I have in blog articles -- it's likely that a shorter answer can be more helpful, at least at first.
Important Kindle Fire Web SETTINGS - Here are the best settings for having this feature work well.
When you're on the web-browser for the first time (this does not have to be done each time), lightly press the bottom MENU, which looks like a grid or an air-conditioner, with horizontal lines. Then press
Settings.
At the second option, set
Text size to "Normal"
On the third option, set
Default zoom to "Close'
On the fourth option, set
Auto-fit pages to "Format web pages to fit the screen"
' Posted on Jan 1, 2012 10:00:01 AM PST
RE says:
[Q]: I like my Kindle, but can't figure out how to surf the web and be
able to read things. Yahoo com is so small a magnifying glass is
needed to see it. I know this is off subject, but can someone tell
me how they do it?
[A} [I've edited my reply to to match how the Kindle Fire works in this situation today.]
Arts&HistoryFan/Kindleworld says:
RE,
You can use an Android feature to pinch-zoom the text to a larger size -- the paragraph of a column you're reading may or may not extend beyond the screen borders.
Then, SINGLE-tap the screen (do that around the center of the screen), and it will keep this larger text size while adjusting the text to the width of the screen and wrapping it appropriately.
That Single-tap actually acts to identify that column of text and to center and fit it to the width of the screen and at the same time SET the font at that size.
If you Double-tap it at this point, it will adjust a bit more if needed to set the width and margins even better while keeping that larger font size.
You may, at first, have two columns up on the screen, but the Single-tap will indicate that this is the column of interest. The Double-tap afterward solidifies it and makes a further fine adjustment if needed.
This works well for forum reading, when you have two or three columns and you want to read just the body of text posted by members of the forum, at a size comfortable for you on the Kindle Fire.
My favorite mode of casual portable web-reading as a result
This also works well with things like Amazon Customer Reviews and news columns. It's now my favorite portable way to read web text, because it's smaller than a 10" screen (I have a Samsung Galaxy 10.1 Tab tablet) and is easier to hold, with a screen width that is more like the width of a book I'd be reading, whether hard- or softcover.
This means I can read web text in whatever size text is best for my eyes at the moment, in a smaller form factor that still presents largish text as needed. This is called "re-flowing" the text and when it's done for a nicely large font-size, it is very nifty.
Give it a try and let me know if it makes a difference or if you have trouble with it, and in the latter case, let me know what kind of web page is being read, with the link, and I'll take a look.
One area in which it doesn't work is Amazon product pages' Product Descriptions -- they seem to format those NOT to wrap for some reason.
SOMEtimes, if you Double-tap instead of Single-tap the first time after upsizing the text, the double-tap leads to the tiny version again, but if you double-tap once more, then it goes back up to a medium-sized text that adjusts to the screen-wrap. The initial Single-tap works better.
Reminder: With both these units, but especially the Kindle Fire,
a barely perceptible, very light press or tap will be more likely to activate touchscreen responses.
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