Amazon has brought their support for web standards up to date with the adoption of HTML 5. The latest offering from Amazon implementing these features is the Kindle Fire tablet.
Rich media content clearly takes precedence for Amazon, in providing users an interactive graphical experience recreating and enhancing the original product content in a digital format.
The new Kindle devices boast a wide range of features and enhancements. KF8 is the next generation file format for Kindle books replacing the older Mobi 7 format.
In the past Amazon kept away from open standards, forcing publishers to provide their books in a proprietary format exclusive to their systems, maintaining firm control on Kindle content.
The support of standardised HTML 5 adds over 150 new formatting capabilities to improve digital content.
Some of the main features to be included are
- Fixed layouts
- Nested tables
- Sidebars
- Callouts
- Scalable vector graphics (SVG)
These new features enable publishers to create great-looking books in categories that require rich formatting and design such as children’s picture books, comics & graphic novels, technical & engineering books and cookbooks. This prepares an environment for production teams to create Kindle books that readers will love.
KF8 file format capabilities will not be available on all Kindle devices. Older devices will not be able to read the new format, however Amazon do have conversion tools in place to convert content to display on all Amazons products. Kindle Fire is the first Kindle device to support KF8 - in the coming months Amazon will roll out KF8 to their latest generation Kindle e-ink devices as well as the free Kindle reading apps.
Kindle Publisher Tools will have updates making it easier and faster for publishers to create high quality Kindle books.
KindleGen 2 creates Kindle content from sources including HTML, XHTML, and EPUB. Kindle Previewer 2 provides an easy way for publishers to preview how titles will look on Kindle devices and apps so they can be confident that their Kindle books look great.
