Amazon Debuts Book-Skimming 'Page Flip' Feature for Kindle Devices and Apps

[MacRumors]

Amazon has announced that a new feature called "Page Flip" will be rolling out to its iOS and Android apps, Fire tablets, and Kindle e-readers as a free, over-the-air update beginning today. The feature gives users a digital approximation of skimming through a book, making "it easy to explore books while always saving your place."

When activated, Page Flip pins the current page to the bottom left of the screen to remember your current reading spot, allowing you to skim through the rest of the book to find a specific passage, map, or simply peek ahead at what's next. A new "bird's eye view" feature truncates an entire book into a scrollable column of pages, making it easier to find highlighted passages from previous pages.

Page Flip is a reimagined Kindle navigation experience that makes it easy to explore books while always saving your place

At a glance, easily recognize specific pages as you jump around. Pictures, charts, your highlights, and the layout of each page are easy to see with Page Flip's pixel-accurate thumbnails that automatically adjust as you change your font and margin settings.

At launch, Amazon says PageFlip is available "on millions of books," with plans to continuously add new entries "every day." Similar to Kindle's X-Ray feature, supported books will be identified on their eBook store page with a "Page Flip: enabled" marker in the feature list.

The Amazon Kindle app is available from the App Store for free. [Direct Link]

Article Link: Amazon Debuts Book-Skimming 'Page Flip' Feature for Kindle Devices and Apps

 

[SandboxGeneral]

This looks interesting, and I'll give it a try when I receive the update.

I also wish the Kindle app for iOS had vertical continuous scrolling too.

 

[Porco]

Looks flipping great.

 

[Glassed Silver]

Please copy this asap, Apple.

Glassed Silver:ios

 

[alfonsog]

That could be useful... I wonder what took them so long to figure out how to implement this feature... Maybe because they wasted so much r&d on the phone

 

[2bikes]

Please copy this asap, Apple.

Glassed Silver:ios

When I flip pages on iBooks, there is a link on the bottom left where it says `go back to page XX`. XX is the page you were on. Is this any different that making it visual?

 

[imronburgundy]

Finally. It's hard reading Fantasy books and flipping to maps/character encyclopedia's on Kindle without losing your place.

 

[Daws001]

How about add split screen support for iOS.

 

[bsolar]

When I flip pages on iBooks, there is a link on the bottom left where it says `go back to page XX`. XX is the page you were on. Is this any different that making it visual?

I don't know how iBooks works but going back to previous points is not the issue: this is already possible on Kindle apps and devices. The problem is easily and quickly "exploring" a book's contents to look for something specific, e.g. a passage.

Search doesn't solve this very well since you might not recall exactly the words you are looking for or you might get many "false positive" results. Flipping pages the "usual" way is not very helpful either since it's pretty cumbersome for "exploring".

Kindle introduced xRay which partially solves the issue for ebooks featuring it, but not nearly all do.

 

[Gizmotoy]

I just wish they'd copy iBooks' scrolling. I'd buy more Kindle eBooks, especially since they're often cheaper, but greatly prefer the scrolling option in iBooks.

 

[Morod]

Thanks, Amazon! This looks pretty useful.

 

[deany]

Flipin' heck, thats good.

 

[flottenheimer]

Best innovation from Amazon in years.

 

[JosephAW]

Electronic page flip was nothing but a gimmick.
Apple needs to add the ability to grab the scroll bar and pull it down to quickly scroll to the bottom. Some apps have implemented this and it's fantastic.

 

[jacjustjac]

A few years back I saw a really intuitive concept video some students programmed into iBooks that allowed you to flip through pages naturally. If you swiped from the right edge with your right thumb, it brought up just the edges of the next hundred or so pages, and when you slowly dragged your finger back the pages flipped through rapidly like they would in an actual book. Repeat for the next hundred pages without having to lift your thumb. It also let you thumbnail a page by just leaving your thumb on the top corner of one while you flipped through with the other. All in all it made digital books feel more like navigating through paper. I think I saw it on macrumors. Anyone know what I'm talking about? I couldn't find the video.