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Books Displays GUI Graphics Handhelds Upgrades

Amazon's Thin Helvetica Syndrome: Font Anorexia vs. Kindle Readability (teleread.com) 156

Posted by timothy from the hey-tell-that-to-the-highway-sign-folks dept.
David Rothman writes: The Thin Helvetica Syndrome arises from the latest Kindle upgrade and has made e-books less readable for some. In the past, e-book-lovers who needed more perceived-contrast between text and background could find at least partial relief in Helvetica because the font was heavy by Kindle standards. But now some users complain that the 5.7.2 upgrade actually made Helvetica thinner. Of course, the real cure would be an all-text bold option for people who need it, or even a way to adjust font weight, a feature of Kobo devices. But Amazon stubbornly keeps ignoring user pleas even though the cost of adding either feature would be minimal. Isn't this supposed to be a customer-centric company?
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Amazon's Thin Helvetica Syndrome: Font Anorexia vs. Kindle Readability More

Amazon's Thin Helvetica Syndrome: Font Anorexia vs. Kindle Readability

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  • Customer-centric? (Score:4, Informative)

    by djbckr ( 673156 ) on Friday February 05, 2016 @01:35PM (#51448081)
    Since when is a large corporation customer-centric? It's stockholder-centric, silly!

    • It's Jeff Bezos-centric.

    • huge savings on ink (Score:5, Funny)

      by goombah99 ( 560566 ) on Friday February 05, 2016 @01:45PM (#51448181)

      e-ink is hugely expensive. This saves them a ton of money. but don't turn it on negative contrast or you'll be replacing toner cartridges like mad.

      Seriously why is e-paper so expensive. even on placed like alibaba you can't buy e-paper for less than the cost of a kindle itself. You could probably buy used kindles just to re-sell the e-paper screens and turn a profit.

      • The patents haven't currently quite run out.

      • e-ink is hugely expensive. This saves them a ton of money. but don't turn it on negative contrast or you'll be replacing toner cartridges like mad.

        Doofus. e-ink doesn't use toner, it uses ink. You don't put toner carts into your ink-jet printer, do you?

        Turning on negative can cause the e-ink to leak out of the e-book and get all over your hands. Impossible to wash off. And don't get me started on the damage that running an e-ink device through the washing machine with a load of whites can cause.

        E-ink is expensive because it is a dead-end technology. There are so many more uses for LCD displays that volume drives prices down. e-ink works for e-book r

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dbIII ( 701233 )

        Seriously why is e-paper so expensive

        Badly run monopoly.
        They could be making a fortune in volume if they had not decided to charge a high price to a limited number of partners for "premium" devices.

    • Re:Customer-centric? (Score:5, Funny)

      by Opportunist ( 166417 ) on Friday February 05, 2016 @01:47PM (#51448211)

      The only reason for a corporation to put the customer in the center is to fleece him from all angles.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by edibobb ( 113989 )
      Correct. When a company reaches a certain size (along with its management egos), there is typically a transition from customer satisfaction to customer behavior alteration.

      • Re:Customer-centric? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by idontgno ( 624372 ) on Friday February 05, 2016 @02:45PM (#51448779) Journal

        "Of course our customers are satisfied! What makes you think they have any choice in the matter?"

        • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

          by Anonymous Coward

          When the Kindle Touch was replaced by newer Kindle e-readers, many were unhappy because all audio features and functionality were removed. That is one reason that I have not replaced my Kindle Touch with a newer model. Another reason is that the internal memory was dropped fro 4GB to 2GB. I see that they increased the memory back to 4GB on current devices, but they refuse to add a slot for a micro-SDHC card.

          It is my belief that features should never be taken away when a new version or model of a device i

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by clodney ( 778910 )

      Since when is a large corporation customer-centric? It's stockholder-centric, silly!

      And since stockholders prefer that the corporation actually have customers, they usually think it is a good thing if the corporation is customer centric. See how that works?

      • Comcast is publicly traded.

        There goes that idealistic theory...

        • Comcast is also in a cronyist relationship with the government via their licensed monopolies. So...they don't have to worry about customer centricity like the competitive industries (except to the extent that they are now losing, at a record pace, eyeballs to the likes of streaming services. I daresay the majority of cable provider customers are only there for the internet...I know I am.)

  • Trend towards illegibility (Score:5, Insightful)

    by QuietLagoon ( 813062 ) on Friday February 05, 2016 @01:43PM (#51448163)
    The current trend towards very low contrast, low weight fonts by many websites and devices is most disturbing. One has to wonder why webmasters are so ashamed of their content that they want to make it so difficult for people to read it.

    • Re:Trend towards illegibility (Score:5, Insightful)

      by U2xhc2hkb3QgU3Vja3M ( 4212163 ) on Friday February 05, 2016 @01:48PM (#51448219)

      I'm still hoping it's a stupid trend, like all those ugly flat icons in dull washed-out pastel colours and GUI elements that are invisible but that you're expected to already know that they're there, what they represent and how they work.

    • Re:Trend towards illegibility (Score:5, Insightful)

      by gstoddart ( 321705 ) on Friday February 05, 2016 @01:50PM (#51448239) Homepage

      Did we mention the whitespace?

      Because I see the trend to add a half an inch of space around everything to make a layout suitable for ... well, I don't know what actually. Not reading, that's for sure.

      My bank recently changed the layout of their web pages ... I used to be able to see all of my accounts on one screen. And suddenly I have to scroll the damned page to read the exact same amount of information on a 23" monitor.

      I think "webmasters" just continue to have no fucking idea about readability and functionality, and instead just do what all the other idiots are doing.

      Just an endless series of things in which all pieces of text get so much personal space as to be absurd.

      They're all taking plays out of the same book, I just can't figure out what the hell it's supposed to be making better ... well, I strongly suspect it's everyone optimizing for tablets and not caring how shitty it looks on everything else.

      • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

        by Merk42 ( 1906718 )

        Did we mention the whitespace?

        Because I see the trend to add a half an inch of space around everything to make a layout suitable for ... well, I don't know what actually. Not reading, that's for sure.

        My bank recently changed the layout of their web pages ... I used to be able to see all of my accounts on one screen. And suddenly I have to scroll the damned page to read the exact same amount of information on a 23" monitor.

        I think "webmasters" just continue to have no fucking idea about readability and functionality, and instead just do what all the other idiots are doing.

        Just an endless series of things in which all pieces of text get so much personal space as to be absurd.

        They're all taking plays out of the same book, I just can't figure out what the hell it's supposed to be making better ... well, I strongly suspect it's everyone optimizing for tablets and not caring how shitty it looks on everything else.

        Or maybe they do user testing via interviews and/or giving different people different versions and it turns out the winning version is unfortunately the one you don't like.

        • Modern techniques have made this sort of testing a *lot* easier than it used to be.

          It hasn't made it any more common, though.

        • Re:Trend towards illegibility (Score:4, Insightful)

          by Hognoxious ( 631665 ) on Friday February 05, 2016 @02:07PM (#51448405) Homepage Journal

          Care to give us more details of the methodology they used, what with you being such an expert and everything?

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by Merk42 ( 1906718 )
            There are various [usertesting.com] companies [userbob.com] that offer user testing online. There's also the scenario where the company calls in random people, perhaps off the street, or via their email list and brings them in to see paper/digital mockups.

            • Brilliant idea. Let's test how a car handles by showing someone a drawing of a lego model of it. And instead of clinical trials we'll test medicines for efficacy & safety by asking people which bottle looks nicest.

              They're charlatans and anyone who uses them is an idiot.

              • The A/B test variety is two (or more) fully functioning versions of a website. Just because you don't like the results of a test, doesn't mean the execution is flawed.

                • Make your mind up. At first you were talking about paper mockups.

                  As for A/B testing, it's going to be A=15% grey on an 85% grey background and B=15% grey with a bit of a green tinge on an 85% grey background. It's too expensive to compare much more than trivial cosmetic differences.

                  You're making it up as you go along.

        • Re:Trend towards illegibility (Score:4, Interesting)

          by gstoddart ( 321705 ) on Friday February 05, 2016 @02:11PM (#51448469) Homepage

          Well, sure .. that's likely. Probable I'd even say ... with the caveat they specifically selected the one which I'd hate the most. ;-)

          It just boggles the mind, it used to present as a nice, neat table, which conveyed all information succinctly in one screen, in a way not unlike how an accountant would present it.

          Now I have to look all over the place scroll, and click twice as many things, and search among a bunch of clutter and pastel colors. Like that makes sense or adds to the usefulness.

          Over 20 years ago a friend said HTML had set back user interface design by 20 years ... the astounding thing is, every few years it keeps making them worse.

          • Well, sure .. that's likely. Probable I'd even say ... with the caveat they specifically selected the one which I'd hate the most. ;-)

            It just boggles the mind, it used to present as a nice, neat table, which conveyed all information succinctly in one screen, in a way not unlike how an accountant would present it.

            Now I have to look all over the place scroll, and click twice as many things, and search among a bunch of clutter and pastel colors. Like that makes sense or adds to the usefulness.

            My admittedly curmudgeonly and unscientific theory is that, one, most people are stupid, and two, stupid people hate reading, so three, stupid people react unfavorably to high text density. Plus, the kind of people who volunteer to participate in market research are even stupider on average. So when UI designers ask this supposedly random sampling of people which interface they like better, most of them, being stupid, choose whatever has the least text, because on some subconscious level they're afraid tha

          • Re: (Score:2)

            by mikael ( 484 )

            I feel the same with trying to find a good font for editing source code. I like the zero's with the dot in the middle (Andale Mono), the dashes/minus signs should stretch all the way across (Courier New) and just about join up, not some 50/50 dashed line (Andale mono). The characters should fill most of the space in glyph box. Some fonts are just too square (Unispace), others are just too thin (TW-Sung), too small (TlwgMono Bold), too narrow (TakaoMincho). What looks good in the font selection window, looks

        • add a half an inch of space around everything to make a layout suitable for ... well, I don't know what

          Because if you don't do it, Google says they will de-list your website for being Un-mobile friendly.

          Eventually, Webmasters cannot say that being customer-friendly is more important than Google friendly, because "no google=no customers".

          You might think there would be laws about "demanding money with menaces" and "abuse of monopoly", but where there is money there no law that cannot be "accidentally misp

      • I think that this trend partly a shift towards more mobile-oriented webpages and being targeted towards the large mobile devices like tablets and touch-screen laptops. I don't like the trend, but I think that's what is behind it.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by jhecht ( 143058 )
        Perhaps it's time to extend handicap accessibility standards to cover type illegible to those of us with anything less than perfect vision?

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by cruff ( 171569 )

        And suddenly I have to scroll the damned page to read the exact same amount of information on a 23" monitor.

        It is obviously a plot to get you to by a 36" 4K monitor.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by dbIII ( 701233 )
        Even worse, an unresizable rendered box popping taking up less than a quarter of the screen and forcing the user to mess about with the web designers custom scrollbars.
        A transaction box that cannot show dollar amounts at the same time as where the dollars are supposed to be transferred to is useless guys even if it gets around pop-up blockers.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by MrL0G1C ( 867445 )

        All webmasters should do time+motion study to get it into their heads that people want to do things quickly and 1 click is better than 5 clicks.

        Google seem to delight in adding extra clicks in order to deter you from logging in or out, Logging in to google breaks my password managers 1-click functionality and requires 2 extra clicks. Fully logging out involves several page loads and no less than 7 clicks.

    • Re:Trend towards illegibility (Score:5, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday February 05, 2016 @02:12PM (#51448473)

      Join the fight!

      http://contrastrebellion.com

    • Re:Trend towards illegibility (Score:4, Informative)

      by Megane ( 129182 ) on Friday February 05, 2016 @02:31PM (#51448659)
      The current trend? I remember ten-ish years ago, way too many web sites were setting body text to 85% text size, 85% gray. And some would put that over a 15% gray background. Fuck that shit.

    • Re: Trend towards illegibility (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Aboroth ( 1841308 ) on Friday February 05, 2016 @03:00PM (#51448905)
      My theory is that now that there are people who do nothing except design and tweak the user interface, they can't ever be "done" or else they risk people realizing how wasteful it is to have that job position and lose their job. Most of the time, once a UI is done and works well, it's best to leave it alone with the required minimal changes that need to be done be assigned instead to the general project maintainers, not specialized "UX" designers. They might actually think they're useful, like most people want to believe, so they'll come up with things to justify their employment. It's easy for them to set up and game a "study" to justify whatever change it is they want to make to the UI in order to keep busy and keep their job. The more drastic the change is, the more work it is, the more they can argue the merits of keeping their pointless job going, and the more controversy and fluff they can inflate their head with to self-justify their own importance.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by SeaFox ( 739806 )

      One has to wonder why webmasters are so ashamed of their content that they want to make it so difficult for people to read it.

      If it's a news site, probably to hide that the cheap freelance "editors" they hired to replace their classically educated journalists have such a poor grasp of the English language. Race to the bottom, and all that...

      OT: When did that change in title happen, anyway? Why is everyone an "editor" now, instead of a "reporter"?

  • "customer-centric" (Score:5, Funny)

    by Mr. Slippery ( 47854 ) <tms&infamous,net> on Friday February 05, 2016 @01:45PM (#51448193) Homepage

    Isn't this supposed to be a customer-centric company?

    Hi! Welcome to the internet. I see you're new here. So let me give you some advice: Amazon eats babies. With puppy sauce. Avoid them at all costs.

  • Hilarious how this so-called "poster" acts all high+mighty pretending to care about consumers vs. big bad Amazon while simultaneously shilling and name-dropping for a competitor of Amazon.

    The righteous indignation of the Pot over the Kettle's blackness is truly breathtaking.

    • The righteous indignation of the Pot over the Kettle's blackness is truly breathtaking.

      This seems to be part of the editorial tone being established by the new owners.

  • What is this Kindle you speak of? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by dhaen ( 892570 ) on Friday February 05, 2016 @01:47PM (#51448207)
    Mine is 5 years old and never required an update - I love the font - and the whole device. I occasionally buy from the Amazon store, so that still works. If they try to enforce an update I'll rely on other sources of book files.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by Threni ( 635302 )

      I have a Kindle Paperwhite 2 and I love the new upgrade. Not noticed changes to that font, but I only use Bookerly. The UI changed with this release; options like airplane mode is easier to get to, and everything looks more modern and less boring, without a single negative change to the important thing; reading books. Goodreads integration so it's easy to track what you're reading, have read and will read. It sucks if people are having problems reading a particular font but you can inject fonts into books

  • Font Geeks (Score:5, Funny)

    by fatalbert1 ( 4089567 ) on Friday February 05, 2016 @01:48PM (#51448221)
    Designers tend to be font geeks. If you have ever worked with designers they're normally pretty sure they know what is better for you than you do.

    • Re:Font Geeks (Score:5, Insightful)

      by UnknownSoldier ( 67820 ) on Friday February 05, 2016 @03:06PM (#51448953)

      > If you have ever worked with designers they're normally pretty sure they know what is better for you than you do.

      Not in my experience as an OpenGL/WebGL, UI, and graphics expert.

      Most designers focus on form and forget that function is WAY more important.

      I work for a fortune 50 company and most UI designs _visually_ tell me they don't know what the fuck they are doing half of the time. They pursue change for the sake of change without taking the time to **think** about what the fuck they are _actually_ doing and how it will impact the user's experience.

      i.e. They don't understand the importance of consistent button layout & usage, balance of whitespace to content, don't have a freaking clue about SNR (everything is monochromatic), don't understand anything about contrast (i.e. alternative table rows with 2 different backgrounds), don't care about things being mis-aligned by 1 pixel, don't understand the GPU's of any of the devices -- such as how to use a texture atlas, don't understand pow2 textures, don't understand kerning, Signed Distance Field (SDF) fonts, don't understand the pros & cons of skeuomorphism, etc. Basically all the UI + Graphics stuff they are SUPPOSED to know but don't jack on.

      Here are some of my UI rules:

      First rule of Good UI:
      * Empower the user to do what they want, and then get the hell out of the way.

      Second rule of Good UI:
      * "Contrast" is the difference between signal and noise. Too much signal effectively it means zero contrast. Congratulations, you just made EVERYTHING become noise.

      Third rule of Good UI:
      * The holy trinity is Signal, Noise, Whitespace. Whitespace is not signal, and not noise, but is the boundary between the two.

      Fourth rule of Good UI:
      Function is more important then form.

      Fifth rule of Good UI:
      An expert knows when to follow the rules and when to break them. A **little** spice is fine, such as skeuomorphism. Anti-skeuomorphism means zero spice = bland, boring, and looks like crap with the latest fad of "flat" UI & gaudy colors.

      Sixth rule of Good UI:
      If your UI is not running at _least_ 60 Hz (sub 17 ms), you're doing it wrong. If you don't understand the difference between 24 (or 30 Hz), 60 Hz, and 120 Hz you really don't have a fucking clue about smooth UI.

      Seventh rule of Good UI:
      If you don't understand the importance of _trying_ to target 1 ms response time for everything, you're doing it wrong.

      Eighth rule of Good UI:
      If you don't know how to design fonts for low-density SCREEN displays (sub 72 dpi) (aka pixel fonts) vs medium-density PRINT (sub 300 dpi) you don't know your craft.

      Ninth rule of Good UI:
      UI & User Experience is built upon software. Software is built up on hardware. If you don't understand the importance of ALL three, such as the size of the texture cache, you're doing it wrong.

      Tenth rule of Good UI:
      If you don't give users the option to customize the colors and placement of widgets, you're doing it wrong. Congratulations, you probably made all the color deficient people pissed off! One of the reasons World of Warcraft became popular -- because all the UI mods empowered users.

      All the modern UIs from Apple, Google, Micrsoft is a complete clusterfuck of these principles. It is like everyone forget everything we learnt about UI from the past 20 years.

      • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

        by Anonymous Coward
        So UnknownSoldier = APK. Got it!

        • LOL!

          Nice joke, but, nah, I manually blocks hosts via the fantastic hosts [mvps.org] plain text file which can be done at the router level -- he is always spamming some 3rd party solution.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by dgatwood ( 11270 )

      And when a reader vendor messes with their design, they get cranky. Still, I suspect that there's a good reason for this change.

      If memory serves, Kindle historically had significant bugs in its rendering, caused by bugs in WebKitGTK. One of the bugs I've seen involved fonts with miscalculated baselines showing up with text that was squished in bizarre ways. Another bug resulted in fonts being rendered either too heavy or too light with the default antialiasing mode—I don't remember which. If they

  • Amazon don't give a fuck for their customer base. They know that no matter how much you bitch, you'll always be first in line to by their next generation piece of shit gadget, warts and all, because you're fucking addicted to one-upping him/her next door.

    I'm not. My phone is a dozen years old and I'll use it until it breaks. My next one is already lined up: it's another V3.

  • Helvetica (Score:5, Funny)

    by Rei ( 128717 ) on Friday February 05, 2016 @01:54PM (#51448275) Homepage

    At least the Helvetica Syndrome is far better than the Helvetica Scenario [youtube.com].

  • Everybody knows that thinner fonts weigh less than thicker fonts. While you're losing readability, you're benefiting from having a lighter device.

  • Fbreader. (Score:2, Informative)

    by queazocotal ( 915608 )

    Open source, and works just great for me.

  • Amazon, customer centric? Have you ever tried to use their search feature? It just gives you a few relevant hits, widely interspersed among completely unrelated crap.
    • I use Amazon search a few times a week for years and it works fine for me. Maybe it's a user education and training issue on your part?
      • Are you trying to sell "search training" course on Udemy?

        You type in something, it displays something completely unrelated (but more profitable for Amazon).

        It is working as designed. I am not working as Amazon designed. I have gone elsewhere.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by msauve ( 701917 )
        Nah, they just have a good index for "butt plugs."

  • Amazon really screwed the pooch on fonts (Score:3, Insightful)

    by kriston ( 7886 ) on Friday February 05, 2016 @02:03PM (#51448373) Homepage Journal

    Since Day 1 of the E-Ink Kindles, Amazon has been indignantly screwing the pooch on fonts. It is hard to understand why this is still the case. Bookerly is not a good font; there is no actual science behind the claims made in their marketing about it. There's just no good size to select, either.

    At least they finally started allowing you to ignore the publisher-preferred font in recent years. Some books published that way were illegible and it's obvious that Amazon employees do not use their own products.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by dgatwood ( 11270 )

      At least they finally started allowing you to ignore the publisher-preferred font in recent years. Some books published that way were illegible and it's obvious that Amazon employees do not use their own products.

      It's a fine line. If a reader goes too far in overriding default fonts, you can have readability problems with things like drop caps. Same goes for overriding the font color (e.g. forcing the color to black could result in black-on-black text if you have an inverted-text decoration at the top of

    • The whole point of a LCD or e-ink display made of pixels is that you can display whatever you want. There's no requirement like paper where you have to pick a font and your'e stuck with it. Manufacturers need to let the device's owner load up and use whatever fonts they want. I mean sure the publisher and device manufacturer can recommend a font, but they have no business dictating what font is used on your device. Forcing you to use one particular font is like making a radio with a tuning knob, but only

  • sans-serif (Score:2, Troll)

    by magarity ( 164372 )

    Sorry, I only read serif fonts.

    • Sorry, I only read serif fonts.

      It's funny how apologising for a personal preference manages to come off as smug and superior. Is it because you hope that anyone reading about your anti-establishment trend-defying quirks will be incandescent with impotent rage at how much more awesome you are than them, and at how this issue doesn't even affect you?

      Sorry, I don't own a TV.
      Sorry, I only drink yak's milk.
      Sorry, I only wipe my bum with Egyptian cotton.

    • Quit trolling.

      If you don't know or understand both the strengths and weaknesses of sans serif fonts (good for screen) and serif fonts (good for print) then you just look like a pretentious, ignorant, bastard.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by lgw ( 121541 )

        Serif is always going to be fatiguing for an e-reader. If you have a reasonable font for modest DPI (not just any random print font), we're long past the terribly-low DPI days.

  • Probably a result of dev/designer demographics... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by jeffb (2.718) ( 1189693 ) on Friday February 05, 2016 @02:10PM (#51448445)

    I think we all see that there's a big push toward The New Shiny for implementing Web UIs, and a push toward hiring young frontier-chasers in place of older developers and designers who are perhaps more attached to older, less cutting-edge technologies.

    Well, surprise -- younger people IN GENERAL have an easier time focusing on close targets, perceiving low-contrast images, and dealing with generally lower light levels.

    Now, most of the designers I've worked with at least pay lip service to accessibility, universal design, and maybe even special-needs users. But when they're showing mockups to decision-makers, they still seem to push for what's trendy -- and, hey, the twenty- and thirty-somethings in the room have no trouble reading it, and if the forty- and fifty-somethings do, they sure aren't going to call further attention to their "differently youthful" status by complaining about it.

    As a result, we see today's visual design. If we squint enough.

  • who is always copying Apple. They are all the same.
  • ... to buy an actual BOOK from a LOCAL book store.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by radish ( 98371 )

      Because paper books have all sorts of options for adjusting the font size and weight.

      • Re: (Score:2)

        by DogDude ( 805747 )
        Why would one have to adjust the font size and weight of text? If you have vision problems, there are large print versions of most books.

  • I've heard a lot of complaints about Amazon and the Kindle. But I don't think I've ever once heard anyone complain about the font contrast.

  • I want read using the same God would read from. Courrier New. Monospace trumps all.
  • If you're having trouble reading the font because it looks to skinny, just increase the font size to where you can read it.

  • Sold our Kindles because how they handle fonts (Score:5, Interesting)

    by dhanson865 ( 1134161 ) on Friday February 05, 2016 @03:33PM (#51449161)

    My wife got a Kindle a few years ago and liked it but still found it hard to read.

    At one point I saw her reading something in Comic Sans and I thought it was odd and unrelated.

    Somewhat later she found about about dyslexie font and OpenDyslexic font and started using them on various devices.

    I found out you could manually import fonts onto the kindle paperwhite so we ordered one.

    Amazon patched all the Kindles to block importing fonts and limit you to the preloaded fonts.

    There is a workaround involving downloading free ebooks and converting them in such a way that you embed the font but it isn't an option for the vast majority of what she would like to read on the Kindle.

    We then sold our Kindles and she just reads on a laptop instead.

    To add to the fun it isn't just Amazon, I haven't found a way to add the dyslexie/opendislexic font to a non rooted android phone. How hard would it be for device manufacturers to just add a simple font import or heaven forbid actually include more fonts in the base configuration?

    As is phones/phablets/tablets are more common than Kindles and now big enough/cheap enough to make the Kindle less important but it's just moved my concern about this issue from Amazon to Android.

    • Many e-book reading apps for Android allow you to side-load font for that app.
      Just create fonts directory on an SD card and place your fonts there. I know it works for FBReader and Coolreader and I think it works for other apps. Just google up details.

  • Before Amazon made any changes Apple was leading the way. Of course plenty of people like the new font but then again there are an awful lot of guides on how to how to make the fonts more readable in IOS and El Capitan.

  • Post to undo faulty moderation.

  • You may think its a ebook thing but its a remote store for amazon. That statement works for the nook and b & n.

    I own neither so when somebody makes an reader that works everywhere without doing voodoo like calibre on content and the like i might get one.

  • The new Bookerly is excellent and I use it or Caecilia if need more weight. However I must say that the font SIZES that are available are awful!!
    There are many sizes around 5 or 6 point which is too small. Then only 2 sizes in ordinary size and 2 giant. I would like to have smoothly variable ecmal point scaling like on epub apps. If that is incompatible with low power cpu then let me get fonts from the net, and be able to buy goof ones from the store.
    I would pay money for this.
    Also I wish it would read zip

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