Amazon Kindle app for Android updated
Yesterday Amazon updated their Android Kindle app with two changes. The first is support for Kindle Format 8 (KF8) books. That lead me to ask the question, what is KF8? According to Amazon:
“Kindle Format 8 is Amazon’s next generation file format offering a wide range of new features and enhancements – including HTML5 and CSS3 support that publishers can use to create all types of books. KF8 adds over 150 new formatting capabilities, including drop caps, numbered lists, fixed layouts, nested tables, callouts, sidebars and Scalable Vector Graphics – opening up more opportunities to create Kindle books that readers will love.”
HTML5 and CSS3 support sounds like someone could make books that can act like websites if they wanted to. This really opens up lots of options for ebook makers to get away from the typical black on white format of books that have been around for hundreds of years. I’m excited to see what comes out of this capability in the future. One thing I wonder about however is if Amazon will require new books to still be compatible with their older e-ink readers. I can’t imagine that a KF8 formatted book would be handled all that well in an e-ink reader. This makes me think that maybe they are looking to get away from making them in the future, and just selling tablets like the Kindle Fire.
Along with the KF8 support, they also added support for over 1,000 children’s titles such as Curious George and Brown Bear and also comics such as Batman and Superman. They also added the ability to email documents to your Send-to-Kindle email address and have them synced to your tablet. Your documents are stored in the Amazon Cloud, so you can access them from any of your supported Kindle devices or apps. head on over to the Play Store and upgrade now to access these new features.
[Kindle]
