Kindle Fire - Part 5, Editing

The Kindle Fire uses a soft keyboard for data entry and editing of text, regardless of field length, and operates in a fashion reflecting the Kindle Fire's Android base.  A long press in a text field that is editable brings up one of three sets of menus:

• If nothing had previously been cut from the text the user is given options to select text
• If something is on the 'clipboard' the system adds an option to paste text
• If the user is already in the middle of the 'text selection' mode, the system offers to copy or cut the selected text

Once in edit mode the Kindle presents a set of 'grab tabs' that can be used to drag the text selection area to fine tune the text selected.  All that may seem pretty basic, but keeping in mind the iPhone didn't support copy and paste until well into it's product life cycle it is noteworthy the Kindle Fire supports these concepts in version 1.

One trivia-worthy note about editing.  Scrolling while editing on Android devices works a little differently from the behavior on Apple devices.  For example, given a subject line longer than the visible text box, selecting text may require 'horizontally scrolling' to reach the text not shown.  In Apple devices, dragging left or right moves a cursor with the text staying stationary, while on Android devices if the text has been highlighted via 'select all' the system behaves as if you were moving the text itself.  The net effect is that the direction you drag your finger to move the text is reversed between the two modes.  On the Kindle, there is a visible cursor that can be moved with the large 'drag tags' (orange strips that hang down below the cursor), on other android devices I've used there is no visible cursor while dragging, but one does appear after touching text.

Editing in the Kindle Reader application works a little differently, reflecting the nature of the app being intended for content consumption and also supporting highlighting and note taking.  The Kindle touch screen interface allows for a very smooth highlighting and note making experience.  Just put your finger on the text, wait a second, then drag to the end of the text you'd like to highlight or note.  After lifting your finger the Kindle asks if you'd like to highlight or add a note.  A long press on a word without dragging brings up the dictionary entry for the word selected.  Once highlights and or notes are made, they appear in the bookmarks list and are accessible from the Internet as with all other Kindle Reader platforms (web, devices, or the app on smartphones and tablets)

Next Up: Cover flow (K-version vs. Apple) / Setting settings, everywhere.

Kindle Fire - Part 4, Where for art thou, comma?

Soft keyboards (keyboards that appear on touchscreens) can be a little too smart.  The flexibility allows developers to change the operation of keys, a feature most of the time, but disorienting when taken too far.  Take the example of the lowly comma.  Arguably a piece of punctuation often discarded in modern (read 'text message' style) communication as extraneous.  This jettisoning of the pause character is probably a reflection of early texting, when anything beyond the obvious (e.g. printed on a 9-digit keypad phone) was deemed unnecessary.  But those days are long gone, and the Kindle Fire keyboard has a broad character set, so much so the comma may, gasp, actually get used.  Presumably this left the developers with a question; where to put the comma. Apparently they were left without much supervision, see the attached screenshot and (a challenge for your amusement) find the comma before reading on.

Don't get too confident in your knowledge of where the comma is, even if you found it in the above photo.  Not satisfied with a single placement, the keyboard developers decided the much maligned comma should move around.  I suppose there may have been hot debates about it's location, and they settled these debates by simply incorporating each suggestion.  In case you still haven't found it (or didn't bother to look, I mean really- some people just can't be bothered with this type of thing) the comma is in the corner of the period key (it's small, you may have to squint).  Don't take that to mean it is accessed via the shift key.  No, the comma is accessed by a long press on the period key.  Let's think about that for a sentence.  A comma means a short pause, a period means a long pause.  To access the period you make a short press, to access the comma you make a long press.  This inversion of meaning and action may be the developers just playing with us, and it isn't worth talking about any further as we may never know what they were thinking.  But I digress.  

The comma moves to a new location, the top row of soft keys (lets call them 'super soft keys') that appear in a background-ish color above the keyboard.  Why?  I guess because it was decided the old spot for the comma was too inconvenent.  To help you in resisting the temptation to take the hard way to arrive at a comma, the developers chose to remove the comma from the period key when it is visible in the 'super soft key' area.  This may explain in part why some people hate software developers.  Perhaps another photo would help illustrate my point.

Comma quest aside, the Kindle Keyboard is very comfortable to type on.  This may reflect more on the size of the device (roughly equal to a 7 inch tablet) rather than anything specific to the software inside.  And speaking of that, the software inside is Android-based, so I checked other Android devices and found similar period, comma, and backspace placement oddities.  The backspace is in a spot much more akin to the return key on any other keyboard on the planet- don't even get me started on how badly that will screw you up. 

Key placement complaints aside, it is a little amusing that a device clearly designed for information consumption actually does make for a good data-entry vehicle.  Taking notes are a breeze on the Kindle Fire, maybe not as easy as handwriting or touch typing on a laptop (this is still a typing exercise where you have to watch the keys instead of relying on tactile feedback) but a nice bonus when considering how you might use the device.

ETA: A Kindle software update has been made to retain the comma accessibility from a long press on the period key.  Whether that was in response to this post (doubtful) or not (likely), thank you.

Next Up: Editing / cover flow (K-version vs. Apple) / Setting settings, everywhere.

Kindle Fire - Part 3

Part 3 - Kindle Fire Review - My First Stumbles

Getting the Kindle Fire set up wasn't flawless.  My first stumble was with configuring email.  There was no native exchange support, but the Kindle did graciously advise me to go to the app store to find an app for that.  It seemed like an odd thing to omit, it seems to show business users were not a top priority for the Kindle Fire designers.  Perhaps a mis-step, almost every Kindle Fire I've seen "in the wild" has been in the hands of a person travelling for business, with the occasional college student (usually female, presumably more women than men read books for leisure in college) thrown in.

ETA: The draft of this review included the above statement before Tech Crunch came out and confirmed my observation: More women than men use the Kindle Fire.  If you're a man, don't let that put you off, buy one and represent!  Or maybe you should wait, more on that in a later post.

My second stumble was when typing.  I wrote the first draft of this in the Evernote app on the Kindle Fire.  The stumble was with the placement of the period key. I was going to make a screen capture to illustrate my typing woes, but (a) screen capture on the fire is non-existent out of the box, a shortcoming of the Android 2.2 OS the Fire is based on, and (b) you get the idea without really seeing it, just imagine periods in lieu of every 3 out of four spaces.

Next up: Where for art thou, comma? / Editing / cover flow (K-version vs. Apple) / Setting settings, everywhere.

Kindle Fire - Part 2

The ongoing story of my first use of a Kindle Fire...

My first thought with the Fire in hand was how to get it setup and associating it with my Amazon account.  On other Android devices I’ve used setup began with turning the device on and immediately being asked to connect the device with a Google account.  The Fire does not care if you have a Google account or not, but the device is only useful when associated with an Amazon account, doubly so with an Amazon Prime Account (more on that later).  So how to connect the Fire to an Amazon account?  

If you purchase a Fire directly from Amazon you do nothing, the nice folks at Amazon set this up for you.  If you need to do it yourself it is an each process  I discovered in a few minutes of playing with a Fire in a store.  Just touch the gear Icon in the bar at the top of the screen.

This is probably a good place to mention The Touch Screen Factor.  The Fire has a touch screen.  Not a big deal and easy to handle on phones, even convenient.  The transition to a tablet or Fire takes a little getting used to.  The Fire has some weight to it, and you need to hang on to it.  Getting too grabby could mean accidentally clicking things.  This is where the generous bezel around the Fire’s screen comes in.  It seems excessive when just looking at the device, but pick one up and you’ll understand the benefit, whether by design or not.

Once the Fire and my Amazon account were linked the Fire immediately displayed my library of books.  The Fire also detected apps I've purchased from the Amazon Android app store and displayed them in a list with the option to install each app.  Not being an app-hoarder I chose a few to try on the Fire.  I'm not a person who has hundreds of apps and I also don't install everything on every device.

Next up: My first stumbles.

Kindle Fire Review - Intro

My company let me use a Kindle Fire for a couple months, this is (the beginning) of the story of what I found.  

First, a little background.  My only prior exposure to the Kindle Fire was playing in a store for 15 to 20 minutes.  My cell phone is an iPhone,  so I'm used to touch screen keyboards, but that also means I've been exposed to the screwy- in my opinion- iPhone autocorrect.  More on that later.  I do have access to an Android phone for software development (Android 2.2 OS), so I'm not unfamiliar with Android (the underlying OS of the Kindle) and have used a small collection of Android apps from both the Android Market (now Google Play) as well as the Amazon app store.  Evernote is one app I've used on both iOS and Android and also happens to be where the draft version of this was written (written initially on the Kindle Fire, then 'cleaned up' for posting).  My very tech savvy employer has also supplied me with an iPad (initially a v1 then traded up for an iPad 2) which I use primarily for note taking and business intelligence demos (using MicroStrategy).

When it comes to eReaders, I have a first generation Kindle eInk reader, a very pleasant reading device that is probably the primary reason I haven't bought a Kindle Fire of my own.  The eInk device just works, satisfying all by eBook reading needs.  But when the opportunity to test the Fire came up I was willing to try a swap.

Coming next: Impressions from my first use of the Fire.

Bike Riding Weather

There was some excellent bike riding weather this weekend.  While out plotting a new route, I noticed a Road Closed sign along the Mississippi River.  The road was closed, but the bike trail was open.  Being the curious sort, and figuring the road was closed due to flooding (river over road type thing), I thought I'd bike down the trail to see how far I could go.

About 12 miles later I made my way through.  At about mile 9.5 the bike trail did have water over it, but a quick alt-route back onto the road gave a clear path.  So in reality, the bike trail should've been closed and the road open.

Ah well, nice ride.

On not writing

I've been preparing some entries for this blog on my test drive of an Amazon Kindle Fire. There's been a bit of a delay in posting as I debate and edit the content, or more acurately, debate editing the content. It occurred to me tonight that if I spent half the time I spend on self-censorship on actually writing I'd probably be twice as good a writer as I am today. Or something like that, I haven't quite got the words right yet.

Content Migration Pending

It may be time to consolidate some content.  This blog has been dormant while content has gone elsewhere.  Maybe it's time for more content to come here.  All great blogs have a theme, so I'm hesitant to create a mash-up of all the diverse stuff I've posted across the web, but there may be a way to get some related stuff in one spot.

Stay tuned...